


Ready is Overrated

by bees_stories



Series: The New Team Torchwood Adventures [14]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Alien Invasion, Alternate Dimension, Alternate History, Children of Earth Fix-It, Clones, Complete, Gen, New Team Torchwood - Freeform, Post Series 2, Rift Storm, Team Adventure, Torchwood is Ready
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-20
Updated: 2015-07-23
Packaged: 2018-04-10 05:31:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 45,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4379159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bees_stories/pseuds/bees_stories
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one is ever really ready for the big, life-changing moments. When a long lost friend comes through the Rift, he triggers an event that stretches Torchwood's resources to the breaking point. On the heels of that crisis, an even older enemy – the spectre of which Ianto had used to spur Jack into rebuilding Torchwood – tests Jack's mantra of 'You've got to be ready'.<br/>A/N: This story takes place roughly six years after <em>Exit Wounds</em>.<br/>Beta by: rabecka. Many thanks!!!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

* * * 

**Turnmill Nuclear Power Station**

 _You need to get out of there now!_

There was an annoying amount of interference on the channel and Owen automatically raised his hand to his headset, although there wasn't a lot he could do about the lousy signal, or the undercurrent of tension that coloured Toshiko's voice. He blew out a frustrated breath as he raked his eyes over the bank of dials and displays that crowded the main control panel. Despite everything he'd done, not one of the readouts had budged a fraction. All the systems were critical. All the safety systems put into place to prevent the power station from melting down were collapsing. All their efforts. All his heroics, including fighting his way into the control room like a one-man army, had been in vain.

A new alarm began to wail. The red lights that flashed everywhere made it look as if the room was bathed in blood. It was one more annoying reminder of the death and destruction that would follow if he failed.

"Sorry, Tosh," Owen said as he flipped off the final fail-safe that would destroy the control room but save the rest of the plant. He stepped away from the panel. There was no point in twiddling more knobs or flipping more switches. It was out of his hands now. "Thanks for trying. Tell Suzie-" He choked up and broke off. Some things were too personal to be relayed second-hand. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Tell the others … tell them ... it was an honour and a privilege."

Unwilling to listen to Toshiko's impassioned pleas to attempt one more end run, Owen removed his headset. He bowed his head and closed his eyes as he took a deep breath to calm himself. The air was hot. It stung his nose and irritated his lungs, and he coughed reflexively. His mother always told him he'd end up in Hell and it appeared that, after a fashion, she was right, damn her. But at least his path to Perdition had been paved with good intentions, something she never once acknowledged.

To his left, something popped. The popping sound was immediately followed by an arcing noise. The hair on the back of his arms and neck rose abruptly. Painfully. And then it seared as the room grew hotter.

Suddenly, the alarms and warning announcements were overwhelmed by a new sound, a great roaring noise that engulfed everything. Owen clapped his hands over his ears in a futile attempt to protect his hearing, realising as he did so that it was a pointless gesture. He was, after all, about to die. Still, the urge to survive was a strong one. He couldn't help himself as he dropped first to his knees, and then flat against the superheated concrete, that paradoxically seemed to be rapidly cooling, and sucked in a ragged breath as everything went completely silent.

*****

**Six Years Later...**

Jack waved his meter around the nuclear power station's central control room and grimaced. "I never liked this place. I wished they had decommissioned it instead of rebuilding."

Mark glanced over at his Captain. This was a job that anyone from the Science and Investigations Units could have handled, yet when the matter was brought up at the morning meeting, Jack had volunteered both of them before Drew could assign members from the rota. 

After the others were dismissed, Ianto had pulled him aside and given him a private briefing about Torchwood's history with Turnmill Nuclear Power Station. He had explained how Dr Owen Harper had been lost in a selfless act of heroism that had averted a serious disaster. And how, because Jack's brother had been responsible for the destruction of Cardiff, he felt personally responsible for every death that day.

"Going to the power station is his way of making amends," Ianto had said.

Mark didn't agree. In his view, Jack wasn't his brother's keeper. But the boss was the boss, and an order was an order. Since the plant had resumed operations, the staff had complained of strange sounds and peculiar incidents. The temperature in the control room fluctuated randomly, despite a state of the art temperature regulation system. Systems repeatedly fried, requiring constant replacement. Monitoring equipment picked up strange energy readings, inconsistent with those typical of a nuclear power station. But despite all the glitches and malfunctions, it wasn't clear how the anomalies were related to Torchwood.

The skin on the back of Mark's neck turned to gooseflesh and tugged at his ponytail. His gaze swept the room and then dropped to the meter in his hands. He hadn't imagined it. The temperature had dropped by three degrees Celsius as the tachyon particle count had climbed. "Boss – "

An urgent message signal chimed; Operations trying to get their attention, alerting them to something they already knew. Mark yanked the Bluetooth device out of his ear when the chime was followed by a blast of static. In his peripheral vision he saw Jack do the same.

"I see it. Get ready."

Jack was already on the move, falling back until he was pressed against a control panel. He drew his revolver and assumed a shooter's stance, ready to defend them from a potentially hostile incursion.

Mark set the meter down on the floor; the telemetry data it was capturing would be sent straight to the Hub whether the device was in his hands or not. Then he did his best to mirror Jack's actions, scurrying backwards until he was shoulder to shoulder with his captain, gun raised and trained at the eye of a widening vortex.

"Hang on!" Jack shouted over the sudden roar of wind.

The buffeting was intense. It was also over almost as soon as they had planted their feet against the floor and their backs against the knobs and dials that filled the wall of the control room. Mark felt bruised from head to foot, but he did his best to ignore the pain because he and the captain were no longer alone.

A man, dark haired and slightly built, lay on the concrete. He held his hands over his head, as if he was shielding himself from harm.

Mark glanced at his captain, ready to follow his lead. Jack was frowning deeply and his expression was perplexed, as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing. He took a cautious step closer to the stranger without lowering his gun. Then another. Then a third.

The stranger groaned. And then he stirred, climbing to his knees before he swayed and caught himself.

"Owen?" Jack said. His voice was so heavy with disbelief that he sounded as if he couldn't wrap his head around what he was seeing.

The man on the floor groaned painfully. His head was still bowed to the ground. He seemed to be having difficulty orienting himself. "What the bloody hell. Why aren't I dead?"

Carefully, the stranger raised his head. Mark stared. He knew the man in front of him, at least he knew him in a second-hand sort of way. In the ready room was a shrine, started by Gwen Cooper, to fallen comrades. Five years ago, there had been two photographs. One was of his friend, Toshiko Sato, and one of them was this man's. His name was Owen Harper, and he had been killed preventing the Turnmill Nuclear Power Station from going up in a fireball. And yet, Dr Owen Harper was in the process of picking himself up off the concrete floor, and he was very much alive.

"Owen?" Jack said again. His voice cracked on the second syllable.

Mark tore his gaze away from the man on the floor. He put his gun away and dropped to his knees in front of the meter, doing a lightening analysis of the readings. There had been a surge of Rift energy, and a spike of tachyon particles that hadn't entirely dissipated. Muons and other types of leptons and more esoteric groups of subatomic particles were also elevated. Even for a Rift event, the readings were atypical.

The man Jack was calling Owen raised his head and regarded the captain with a woozy expression.

Jack glanced over at Mark. He shrugged back. The energy readings were unusual, but there wasn't anything about their new arrival to suggest that he was an immediate danger. The captain put away his gun and helped the doctor to his feet and then drew him into a bear hug.

The gesture of affection was less than appreciated. "Oi! Leave off, Harkness! What the hell has got into you?"

Jack disentangled himself. He looked at the man in his arms fondly, and then punched him in the face, knocking him out cold. He huffed with exertion as he scooped the not-so-late Dr Harper into his arms and carried him out of the control room without so much as a backwards glance.

Mark shoved the meter sideways onto an empty space in an equipment rack, and hurriedly followed.

* * * 

Jack's thoughts were racing. On autopilot, he strapped Owen into the back seat of the SUV and then administered a sedative from the store in the first aid kit. He knew he should head straight for the quay and then make for the hospital for Rift survivors at Flat Holm Island, but until he had a better fix on what had happened, procedure could wait.

"Alert Felicity that we have an incoming patient," he instructed Mark. "And tell your team to get to their stations. All hands on deck. I want answers. Pronto."

"Already on it," Mark replied. His voice was calm as he relayed additional instructions to Izzy Belfour, the mission control technician at the Hub.

"Good," Jack replied tersely. He knew he needed to pull himself together. He was going into shock. His hands had gone numb from clutching the steering wheel,and his heart was pounding hard enough to echo in his ears. He forced himself to take a long, slow exhalation, emptying his lungs completely and then refilling them in an equally deliberate manner, because he was in danger of forgetting to breathe entirely.

"Are you all right, Boss?" Mark asked. There was a heavy note of concern colouring his tone.

Jack drew up to a traffic signal and pulled to a stop. He forced his hands to release their stranglehold on the wheel and one by one he flexed each finger to relax them as he concentrated on breathing normally. Finally, just as the signal changed colour, he tried for a confident smile and knew by Mark's reaction it had fallen flat. "Let me get back to you on that," he said, admitting without admitting to his senior technician that he was anything but all right.

* * *

Gossip travelled fast through the tunnels and corridors of Torchwood Three. Ianto heard a pair of technicians, members of Mark's data analysis team, whispering the moment he came out of his office. They stopped when they saw him and exchanged significant looks, as if they were silently conferring. Finally, Heather McCloud shrugged and turned to address him. "Sir, have you heard?"

Ianto frowned. He'd been cut off from the rest of the Hub, on the phone most of the morning with his primary counterpart at UNIT coordinating Jack's schedule for a summit meeting. They had just reached a successful conclusion, and he was on his way to the loo. His thoughts were still preoccupied by agenda minutia, but there was something about the two technicians' body language that communicated their gossip was more important than who had been caught out having a quickie in the broom cupboard. His need to relieve himself was temporarily forgotten as he joined the pair. "Heard what?"

"RS at Turnmill Power Station."

"And?" Ianto prompted when Heather hesitated. Rift survivors had been recovered from all sorts of odd places. The power station didn't seem any more peculiar than a shopping arcade in Penarth, or the middle of the bay. Although it _was_ unusual that this one had shown up unannounced, and when Torchwood operatives were already on the scene.

"The RS is one of us, sir. Torchwood," blurted Mick Springer, the other gossiping technician.

Ianto felt his frown deepen as a cold hand ran its disembodied fingers down his spine. Being taken was every Torchwood agent's worst nightmare. "Who?" he demanded with quiet intensity. A handful of agents had been sucked into the Rift since Torchwood Three's inception. Ianto knew all of their names. He'd memorised all of their faces, and the places from which they'd been stolen. He knew the cover stories that had been put into place to explain away their disappearances. That information flooded his brain as his pulse quickened. "Who has been returned?"

"Sir, you might need to brace yourself for a shock," Heather suggested. Normally, her North Wales accent was soft, but it thickened under stress, and her words blurred together.

For a giddy moment, Ianto wondered if _he_ was the agent the technicians had been whispering about. Had he been taken at some point in the future? Had the Rift sucked him up and delivered him into his own past?

Before he could either brace himself for Heather's shock or demand even more fervently that she tell him a name, Ianto's phone chirped in his ear. He held up a hand, forestalling her revelation.

 _Ianto, you're not going to believe this,_ Jack said without preamble or greeting. _I don't know how it's possible, but Owen's alive._

The sense of overwhelming relief that he wasn't the riftugee caused Ianto's overrunning imagination to screech to a halt. For several seconds he couldn't hear anything properly as blood roared in his ears. He felt his knees sag as a string of tension that had been holding his body stiffly erect was severed. And then he mentally replayed Jack's bombshell. "I'm sorry. Say that again."

 _Owen. Is. Alive,_ Jack repeated, enunciating each syllable precisely.

"Right. That's what I thought you said." Ianto replied calmly, despite the feeling of intense disbelief that was causing everything to tilt sideways. He was vaguely aware that Heather and Mick had moved to bracket him, and that each stood ready to dive in and hold him upright if necessary. "I'll call a departmental briefing then, shall I?"

Taking refuge in routine, Ianto disconnected the call from Jack, waved off the looks of concern from Heather and Mick, and retreated back into his office. He poured himself a large whiskey from the bottle he kept on the sideboard and drank it neat before sagging into the chair behind his desk, one disjointed thought after another swirling haphazardly around in his head. He poured another measure of whiskey and forced himself to calm down and work out how long it would take for Felicity to do a medical exam and for Mark's team to come up with some sort of plausible hypothesis to explain the inexplicable. Finally, even though he wasn't much more calm or collected then when he'd first sat down, he sent out a request that the relevant department heads stand by to convene in the conference room in approximately two hours' time.

* * *

_Thank God for Felicity_ , Jack thought as he handed off the trolley bearing Owen's unconscious body. "Quick as you can," he said crisply.

He waited for the doctor to nod – her silent acknowledgement that all his instructions, including the ones he hadn't thought to give, were understood – and to bear the trolley down the corridor and around the corner before he retreated. He knew the faux-calm demeanour he was pretending wasn't going to hold for much longer. He needed to retreat. To gather his chaotic thoughts and pull himself together properly. He headed straight for his office in the body of the old part of the Hub, ignoring the covert glances and whispers of his staff. His people needed to see that he was taking this latest development in stride. Panicky commanders led frightened troops, and he wasn't going to be responsible for some field investigator losing his or her nerve because they couldn't draw on his example in a time of crisis.

Thankfully, Ianto had anticipated where he would be needed most. He was standing next to the sideboard, pouring coffee from a carafe into Jack's favourite mug.

"I thought you might need this," he said as Jack sank into his chair, grateful he didn't have to carry his weight on shaking knees any longer. He wrapped his hand around Ianto's as the mug was offered, taking a small measure of solace in the familiar gesture, and raised an eyebrow as he caught the scent of whiskey intermingled with that of dark roasted coffee beans.

"Under the circumstances, it seemed appropriate." Ianto waited until Jack had taken a sip, and then he sat down on the edge of the desk. "Could it be true, Jack? Could Owen have been snatched away by the Rift moments before coolant flooded the control chamber?"

Jack shook his head and then he shrugged. He felt completely out of his depth. The more they learned about the Rift, the more complex and inexplicable it got. "It seems too much to hope for, doesn't it? The Rift actually doing a good thing for a change." He stared down into the depths of his mug and then took a deep swig, letting the slightly too hot coffee and alcohol-sweet burn of the whiskey ground him. It would be too easy to get swept up in joy, only to be brought down again because Owen had been returned to them irrevocably damaged in a way that only a thorough medical examination could reveal. 

"How did he seem?" Ianto asked softly.

Jack shrugged again, and then he smiled as he remembered Owen's outrage at being heartily embraced. Suddenly the world seemed a bit brighter. One of his own, long thought to be lost, had been returned to the fold. "Fine. He seemed fine."

"Six years," Ianto mused softly. "He's got a lot to catch up on." He looked down at the remodelled space below them, seemingly lost in thought.

There had been so many changes made during the intervening years, but one aspect of the Hub had remained constant; Jack still lived in the bunker. To accommodate what the staff regarded as their Captain's eccentricity, the windows of the office had been replaced by mirrored glass. It allowed its occupant to see out, but those below could no longer see in. 

Jack took advantage of the privacy feature. He rose and crossed to stand behind Ianto. He slipped his arms around Ianto's waist and embraced him. They stood that way, quietly absorbing the possibilities, until the phone on Jack's desk broke the silence.

Ianto sighed. He gave Jack's hand a squeeze and then stepped out of his arms to answer the telephone. "Yes?"

Jack watched as Ianto frowned and nodded. "Right. Any complications?" The frowned deepened. "A fatality. Can it be explained away? Good. Release the body to Dr O'Neal and let the paramedics deal with the witness after you've retconned her." Ianto glanced at his watch. "See you when you get in. Right. Bye."

"That was Andy," Ianto explained. "There was an incident with a Hoix over on Prince Street. It killed the owner of an off licence, and frightened the life out of an unlucky delivery driver. They'd just got a fresh consignment of tobacco products, and evidentially the Hoix went a bit mad trying to get a fix."

"The Hoix?" Jack asked.

"Dead," Ianto replied. "Fortunately, the pursuit occurred mostly in back alleys and sewer tunnels, so there were no additional witnesses."

"At least there's that," Jack said.

The death was a tragedy, but it was the sort of tragedy they were used to dealing with. Jack felt his world shift back onto its proper axis. "Right. I forgot to ask you. How'd your conference call with UNIT go this morning? Did they give you much grief?"

Ianto shrugged. "No more than I expected." He gave Jack a tentative look. "I can see their point. The number of international incidents involving extraterrestrials has been steadily increasing. Their wanting greater oversight and more efficient resource sharing makes sense."

Jack scowled, even though he knew Ianto had a point. But he couldn't shake the feeling that if he ceded control of Torchwood to UNIT, he'd be betraying those he'd sworn to protect, especially the Rift survivors – both human and alien – who might not be as well treated if certain officers within UNIT were allowed to have their way.

"I'll make concessions, Ianto, but I'm not giving away the store."

Ianto held his hands up to indicate he wasn't looking to start a fight. "And that's the basis for the memorandum of consensus we worked out this morning. UNIT will take on a greater degree of oversight on interstellar incursions, while Torchwood will continue to take the lead with all Rift related events."

"And what about the Doctor?"

Ianto shrugged. "While technically he's our remit, due to the conditions set forth in Torchwood's royal charter, the Doctor's complex history with UNIT complicates matters. We agreed that all Doctor-related incidents will be dealt with on a case by case basis."

Jack nodded. "Fair enough."

Ianto glanced at his watch. "By my estimation, it will be at least an hour before Dr Porter concludes her preliminary assessment. We both missed lunch, and it's likely to be a long evening. Shall we get out for a bit? Maybe get a bite before the briefing?"

An army travelled on its stomach, and so did its commanding officer. Jack nodded. A brisk walk out on the quay sounded a hell of a lot better than pacing his office waiting for answers. "Yeah. Come on. I could do with some fresh air."

* * * 

"Captain, I don't know how to put this." Felicity took a breath as she handed over a copy of her preliminary findings to Jack. "Physically, that is Owen Harper. DNA. Blood. Retina scan and fingerprints. They all match."

"But?" Jack prompted. His stomach knotted as he mentally prepared himself for the incoming bombshell that he'd known, ever since he'd dragged Owen's body out of the power station's control room, was coming. Some things were just too good to be true.

"There are inconsistencies," Felicity replied. "In the medical record it says that Dr Harper was shot twice: once in the shoulder and once in the chest. The second, a fatal event that was only mitigated by the use of a piece of alien technology colloquially known as the _Risen Mitten_?"

"It had been a tough week," Ianto said by way of explanation.

Jack shot Ianto a sharp look across the conference table. He wasn't in the mood for even mild levity. Then he returned his attention to Felicity. "Sorry. Please continue, Dr Porter."

"There was also a notation of broken fingers on his left hand." Felicity looked up to meet Jack's gaze. "The man in my sickbay has been shot, twice. But those injuries were to his left leg. There is no indication that he was ever shot in the chest or shoulder, and he has never broken his hand."

She paused, took a sip of water from the bottle in front of her, and then resumed her report.

"Furthermore, even though I have never previously met Dr Harper, he knew me. Under the guise of testing his memory, I got him to go into detail about my hiring. He explained that my CV, and Mark's, had been sitting on your desk at the time of your – " Felicity cleared her throat as she referred to her notes. "– buggering off to find yourself. Since the team was shorthanded, Suzie made the unilateral decision to bring us both onboard."

Ianto mouthed 'Suzie' and dropped his gaze to the table.

Jack felt himself pale. Suzie wasn't a name he ever expected to hear again, at least not in connection with Torchwood. "He said what?"

"I wasn't sure who he was referring to either," Felicity said. "He made it quite clear that he meant Dr Suzie Costello-Harper, your Second-in-Command, and his wife."

"He's not our Owen," Ianto said. He looked up from the table and straight at Mark. "How is this possible?"

Mark shrugged and shook his head. "I don't know. I mean, in theory, alternate timelines are possible, but it's always been our understanding that the Rift was linearly contiguous." Everyone's expression turned blank and it became obvious that he was talking over their heads, so he tried again. "It only operates in a single dimension. The idea that we could be breaching other dimensions isn't one we ever seriously contemplated."

Felicity continued to report. It was clear that she was hoping that perhaps something in the interview would give them a clue, or a way to open a new line of enquiry. "I debriefed him as thoroughly as I could, asking him about each serving member of the team during his tenure. He stated that Andy Davidson had been recruited out of the police force after he had stumbled onto a weevil chase. When I asked about Gwen Cooper," Felicity hesitated before continuing, "he looked blank, and then he snapped his fingers and recalled that had been the name of Andy's partner when he'd been a constable. It was her death that put Andy onto your radar and led to his hiring."

Jack felt his expression, already pensive, grow even more so. "Toshiko Sato?"

"A good friend and valued colleague," Felicity replied. "He asked after her almost as soon as he regained consciousness. It seemed they were in radio communication at the time of his Rift event. I evaded telling him about her fate."

"Good call," Jack said.

"And me?" Ianto asked. "What did he say about me?"

Felicity straightened in her chair. She met Jack's gaze, holding his eyes with hers.

_You don't want the others to hear this._

Felicity wasn't normally telepathic, but in times of crisis she had the ability to concentrate her thoughts enough for him to read. Jack cleared his throat to cover his surprise at the unexpected non-verbal communication.

"Mark, start running analyses factoring in the possibility of a nonlinear, interdimensional breach."

His gaze shifted to Andy, and then to Andy's clone Drew who shared responsibility for field operations. "Boys, I want all teams on their toes. If we start getting more arrivals from this other dimension we could be in for trouble." He glanced at each staff member in turn and then ordered, "Move, people!"

The conference room began to clear. Ianto rose, but Jack grabbed his wrist and held him in place. He sat back down again and relayed a summary of the briefing to Simon, his lead bloodhound in the Research Department. "Check Providence Park and other similar facilities for case histories that match our current scenario," he added as an afterthought. After he disconnected, Ianto gave Felicity a half-smile. "So, bad new, is it?"

Felicity was doing her best to keep her expression neutral, but the sombre cast of her eyes suggested she felt as if she was attending a terminal patient's bedside, which was ridiculous because Ianto was well and whole and sitting in front of her.

"After a fashion, I suppose it is," she hedged. "In that Owen Harper's world – " Felicity ruffled her fringe, one of her few tells when she was uncomfortable or frustrated. "Ianto, I'm not sure how to tell you this, but in that Owen Harper's world, you were executed by Jack for being a traitor to humanity."

Ianto's smile became fixed and a bit sickly. "I see. And what were the circumstances that led to my execution?"

Felicity's eyes dipped to the copy of the report in front of her. She read from it mechanically. "You collaborated willingly with the Cybermen, and nearly caused the destruction of Torchwood Three."

Jack sagged back against his chair. He hadn't even realised he'd leant forward.

Ianto seemed to accept the news with equanimity. He turned towards Jack and shrugged. "You were tempted to pull the trigger that night." He returned his gaze to Felicity's. He seemed to be assessing her reaction. "For the record, Doctor, there was only a single cyberwoman, and my intentions, if misguided, were well meant."

Even though he wasn't the one to pull the trigger, Jack offered his most heartfelt apology. "I'm so sorry, Ianto." He dropped his eyes to the table, contemplating the wood grain, as he tried to come to terms with the idea that in some other universe he had killed the person who had become his anchor.

"Make it up to me later," Ianto said quietly. He cleared his throat to indicate that the personal moment was over. "I suppose that my non-death is going to present another problem."

"What do you mean?" Jack asked. He raised his eyes because he knew it was expected of him, and tilted his head so that he could see Ianto's face.

"Based on my memories from that night, I'm going to wager that this Owen Harper is going to want to kill me." Ianto gave Felicity another half-smile. "Perhaps you'd be good enough to lock up any potential weapons in the infirmary before we're reintroduced?"

* * *

Mark read through the data analysis from the Turnmill incident a second time, and then he put the report aside and leaned back in his chair, contemplating the ancient ceiling. The rest of the office had been refurbished when they'd renovated the wing, freshening the paint and bringing the lights and power up to snuff, but the ceiling was pure Victorian in all its elaborate plaster glory, right down to the rose at its centre.

Once again he was confounded by the unfathomable. His understanding of how the Rift worked had just been proven completely wrong and now they were back at square one. "Square Zero, more likely," he muttered to the room at large. It was possible that the porosity between dimensions was a recent event, and that all the scientists and mathematicians who'd studied the Rift before him hadn't been wrong. But it didn't alter the fact that the nature of the Rift had changed. Although what that meant, exactly, was still very unclear.

He needed a way to test the stability of the walls between multiverses without causing any damage to them.

They needed more data from which to work.

They needed not to freak the hell out because it was possible that the confluence of events, the opening of the maw of the Rift coupled with the increased radioactivity from a power station about to go critical, might have been enough to shred the walls between realities.

Mark sighed. He knew that several floors above him, Jack was waiting for answers.

Was the world as they knew it about to end?

Had it ended without them knowing, sliding from one functioning model to another?

Had they been busy cleaning up the detritus from a multiverse all this time?

Did it really matter?

They'd used the same methodology to collect telemetry data for the past five years. He decided to compare that data to the information from Turnmill. If there had been similar types and levels of subatomic particles, then they'd know, within a reasonable certainty, that multiverse incursions had been occurring. Then, using that data, they could build a model and examine historical records. If the computer could find no similar events, then they'd have at least a small assurance that they were dealing with a unique situation.

It was a plan.

Now all he had to do was put his plan into action without alarming his team, each and every one of whom had a vivid imagination, and the ability to see endless possibilities and potentials. He contemplated the plaster rose for another long moment, finding his centre and calming his churning thoughts, and then reached for the old fashioned telephone on his desk. It was time to call his people together and set them to work.

* * * 

Even though he was barely conscious, Owen was fuming. He was a prisoner in his own infirmary, being kept in a drugged stupor, while his junior conducted threat assessments. There could be no other reason for his repeatedly being knocked out. Or for the overly comprehensive interview process he'd been subjected to. The fact that he had helped develop the protocol under which he was currently being held was no consolation. It was meant for other people. Not for him. When he crawled his way out of the drugged miasma that was enveloping his consciousness like living smoke, he and Felicity Porter were going to have words.

He concentrated on his anger, feeding its flames with a litany of complaints: the room was too close, the mattress too firm, the blend of sedatives was fractionally imbalanced and made him feel disconnected from reality instead of pleasantly relaxed. Being angry was useful. Anger increased his heart rate. It made his blood pump faster and helped clear his mind. He could feel his limbs again. He could move his toes and wiggle his fingers. He could hear soft conversation. Jack and Felicity, but not Suzie.

_Where the hell was Suzie?_

"He's coming around," Felicity said.

Jack was standing there wearing his serious Captain's Face, which didn't bode well. Something must have been amiss in his test results, something bad enough to warrant the grave expression. Owen struggled to sit up. He tried to raise his hand off the mattress so that he could demand his chart to review Felicity's findings, but he still lacked the necessary strength. His arm rose only a few inches off of the mattress and then it flopped ineffectually back down again.

"Just give it a minute, Owen." Jack sounded odd. Like he couldn't decide if he was happy or sad and was stuck somewhere in between.

Jack's emotional confusion only added to Owen's irritation. It gave him the final boost he needed to do more than blink his eyes. He looked up at the infirmary ceiling and noticed that something about it seemed very different.

"Where the hell am I?" He craned his head around and realised they had put him in a self-contained isolation chamber, but neither Jack nor Felicity were wearing masks or protective clothing, so it wasn't because he was contagious. "Why am I in quarantine?"

"Relax, Owen," Jack said. "It was just a precaution. Felicity was just being extra careful."

"Want a gold star, do you, love?" Owen snapped.

The drugs in his system had left him with a dry mouth and a sore head. He struggled to sit upright. Felicity obliged him by shifting the pillows and then handing him a glass of water with a straw in it. He sipped, cleared his throat, had a better look round, and realised that nothing in the room was the same as when he'd left for the power station.

"What the hell has happened to my infirmary?" He craned his neck to see outside the isolation chamber and still couldn't see any sign that Suzie was waiting in the wings. She had been overseeing a bomb disposal team during the crisis. Some of the teams had reported that the bombs had been tripwired...

"Where the hell is Suzie? I want to see my wife. Now."

"I'm afraid that's not possible." Jack's face contorted into a decidedly uncomfortably expression.

"What happened, Jack?" Owen demanded. He got a dull ache in the pit of his stomach. A sick feeling that his world was on the verge of being irrevocably torn apart.

"The important thing to remember is, you didn't die at the power station." Jack put his hand on Owen's shoulder in a gesture that was meant to be consoling, but wasn't.

"Suzie's dead." Owen shut his eyes, blanking out the world. The infirmary was replaced by a montage of Suzie's face. Serious as she picked apart a piece of alien technology. Laughing at one of his jokes. Smiling a smile that warmed his heart because it was meant just for him.

Oh, God, he'd never see her smile again.

"In a manner of speaking, yes." Jack sounded far away. Owen realised it was because the blood was roaring in his ears.

Jack took away his hand. When Owen opened his eyes he saw that the captain was struggling, opening his mouth and then closing it again, as if he couldn't decide what next to say.

"Just spit it out, Harkness," Owen said wearily. "My wife is dead. What else can you possibly say to me that is going to be worse?"

Jack and Felicity exchanged glances. Felicity nodded, giving her tacit approval that it was time to come clean.

"Microseconds before the control room was flooded with coolant gas, you were sucked up by the Rift," Jack blurted. "You were transported, not just through time, but interdimensionally."

A stabbing pain of extraordinary virulence throbbed in Owen's temple. He put his hand to his head and pressed down to alleviate the ache before looking up to regard his captain with a weary expression. "I've got a headache, Harkness. So stop beating about the bush and give me the bad news in English."

Jack blew out a breath. And then he shrugged. "Fine. This isn't your world, Owen Harper. The Rift isn't a vacuum tube like we thought it was. More likely, it's a matrix with a billion billion corridors. There was a breach between your reality and this one, and you were deposited, six years after the events you last remember, into a world that's almost, but not quite, the same as the one you nearly died in."

"So, Suzie?"

Jack shook his head. "Was never your wife. You had a relationship at one point, but it hit a rough patch. Before you could get back on track, she was killed."

Owen shook his head. He couldn't wrap his brain around what was happening. "So, not dead. Not in my own universe." Something occurred to him. "Hang on. Am I here? Is there already an Owen Harper in this reality?" Once again he tried to look beyond the confines of the plastic-shrouded chamber. "Is Felicity running my case because I didn't want to freak myself out?"

Jack pulled yet another face and then he shrugged. "I'm sorry, Owen, but no. In our timeline Owen Harper was killed at Turnmill Power Station. He sacrificed himself to save thousands of other lives."

"So at least I … he died a hero," Owen said softly. He pressed his lips together as he exhaled through his nose. He was peripherally aware that the monitors tracking his heart rate and blood pressure were beeping faster, in time with the throbbing in his head.

"I think that's enough information to absorb right now."

Felicity gently tugged at Jack's sleeve, guiding him away from the side of the bed, and then made an adjustment to the medication feed. Owen felt a languorous sensation seep into his limbs, and then he slumped back against the cushions, feeling as if nothing at all really mattered.

* * *

Once again, Jack felt himself overwhelmed. Once again, he retreated to his aerie. Once again, Ianto was waiting, ready to offer support and counsel.

"So are we going to keep him?" Ianto asked, even before Jack had a chance to snatch up a bottle of water off of the sideboard, and then drop into his chair.

Trust Ianto to cut straight to the heart of the situation, Jack thought as he twisted the cap open and took a long draught. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, earning a disapproving look, and then asked, "Do we have a choice?"

Ianto raised an eyebrow that Jack interpreted as 'Of course we do.' Granted those choices were Retcon, a bullet, or the freezer, pending additional information, but they were still choices.

"I take your point, Ianto," Jack said. "But let's, for argument sake, say the answer is 'yes'. What's the downside?"

Ianto tilted his head and pursed his lips thoughtfully for a moment and then asked, "You mean if he isn't going to destabilise our continuum just by his existence in it?"

Jack nodded, wondering if Ianto was being deliberately provocative, or if he was being unduly pessimistic as a defence against getting his own hopes up. Fewer relationships began as tempestuously as Owen and Ianto's, but working long hours under adverse circumstances had helped them forge a bond of friendship based on mutual respect and trust. Although he'd done his best to downplay his emotions, Ianto had taken Owen's final death hard.

Jack nodded. "Yeah. Let's go with that. Since there's only one of him in existence, he's not going to tear a hole in the fabric of the universe. Do you see any downside to keeping him around?"

Ianto pursed his lips as he ran scenarios. "We can't put him on the payroll under his own name."

"True." That was a minor problem, but a problem all the same.

"Granted, for Inland Revenue purposes, we could switch his name around without too much bother," Ianto mused. "Harper Owen works just as well as Owen Harper."

Jack was tempted to roll his eyes, but he didn't. He drank more water instead, lowering the level of the bottle by another third and then he capped it and tossed it into the bin. "The point is, he'll need a new identity. We can work with that. What else?"

With a small sigh, Ianto went to the bin, bent over and retrieved the bottle, and poured the rest of its contents on the potted peace lily that took up a corner of the file case. Watching Ianto bend and stretch was a small diversion, but enjoyable, and Jack made a point to admire the view. When he was finished, Ianto ran his palm down the back of his trousers. It was a delightful added bonus, and Jack smiled his approval.

Ianto dropped the now empty water bottle back into the bin and then he continued. "Friction with the current staff. In his world he's head of the medical section and Dr Porter is his second. We can't demote Felicity to make him comfortable."

Ianto was right. The displaced Owen Harper had already proved himself to be as prickly and proud as the one they had lost. He probably wouldn't be happy with the loss of status. On the other hand … Jack had a brainwave. "No, but we could give him a senior research position, which would probably make him happier. Owen never really did like working with live patients."

"Very true," Ianto conceded.

"We can make this work, Ianto," Jack said. "I know we can."

"You're probably right, but Jack – " Ianto looked as if he was considering his next words carefully. "I know you want Owen back, even if he's not precisely the Owen we've lost. But is it fair to _this_ Owen?"

Jack frowned, not quite following Ianto's train of thought. "What do you mean, Ianto?"

Ianto gave Jack the same patient look one gives a child who had his heart set on a puppy, but isn't going to get one. "He's not the same man."

"I know that!" Jack snapped more harshly than he intended. He held up an apologetic hand. "I'm sorry, Ianto. That wasn't called for. But what's your point?"

Ianto moved to sit on the edge of the desk, close enough that his leg brushed Jack's as he settled. "You said he was married."

Jack couldn't help his bemused smile. "To Suzie. Can you imagine, Ianto? Our Suzie and Owen, married?"

For a moment, Ianto returned his bemused smile. "His Suzie must have been a very different woman to ours." The smile dropped and Ianto's expression became gentle. He reached out and brushed Jack's arm. "Perhaps, despite his appearance, we shouldn't make too many assumptions about this Owen Harper. Because other than Diane, who stole his heart, I can't imagine our Owen making that sort of a commitment to anyone."

And right then, Jack knew Ianto had a point.

* * *

Mark made a final adjustment to the tiny wristband particle counter, and then he plugged it into a monitor to verify it was correctly calibrated.

"It's based off the same technology we've already installed out at the reactor site," he explained.

Ianto nodded. "You're certain this is just a precaution?" He eyed the blips and squiggles on the screen sceptically.

Mark performed one more test. He nodded his satisfaction with the results, and then disconnected the wires connecting the particle counter to his test gear. Finally, he took a small paper sheet off the workbench, and packed it and the particle counter into a small carrying case. "We came up with every possible scenario we could think up, and then we ran them through the computers. There's a fractionally small chance that Dr Harper could precipitate or attract interdimensional instabilities, and we all agreed that we'd rather be safe than sorry."

Ianto regarded the small black case thoughtfully. It looked like it should hold a watch or perhaps a pair of glasses. "I'm still not sure I understand. For every pivotal decision I make, a new reality is born."

Mark nodded. "Right. That's our working hypothesis."

"And that goes for everyone," Ianto continued. "My decision points cross with your decision points, and Jack's, and so on and so on until there is an infinite web of realities." He picked up the case and turned it over in his hands. "If that's true then this multiverse of ours is like a ball of yarn with each dimension criss-crossing the others dozens or hundreds or maybe even thousands of times."

"Even with the computing powers of the mainframe we don't have the juice to calculate the number of possible dimensions," Mark said.

"So how can the walls collapse?" Ianto opened the case and ran his finger over the monitoring device. "Shouldn't the sheer volume of them help maintain the – " He paused, searching for the right phrase. "– structural integrity? Shoring up the walls like layers of paper mâché?" He realised he'd mixed his metaphors and frowned.

Mark chuckled. "Don't feel bad. You should have been at the staff meeting earlier. Balls of yarn. Fibres of cables. Criss-crossing pathways. Everyone had their own pet analogy to try and explain what's going on. Believe me, Ianto, you've got about as good a handle on this as the rest of us do, because this isn't the easiest stuff to get your head around."

Ianto gave Mark a half-smile. "Thanks, I think." He shut the case and then glanced at his pocket watch. It was getting late, and although the trip to the research lab had been a legitimate errand, he knew he was procrastinating. He had yet to make the new Owen Harper's acquaintance, and even though he had cautioned Jack about making assumptions about their new arrival, he didn't anticipate a warm first meeting.

But he had a job to do. Though Second was a title they rarely used, it fell under Ianto's remit to handle the administrative details of Jack's command, and that included getting Owen settled. Feeling only slightly more reassured than he had been when he entered the laboratory, Ianto put his watch away and headed for the medical bay, leaving Mark at his desk, communing with the mainframe.

* * *

"Bloody hell." Owen stared at a dead man walking.

Ianto Jones, traitor to humanity, held up his hand in a gesture meant to forestall a reaction that he had clearly anticipated. "Before you grab the nearest weapon, Dr Harper, hear me out. Whatever happened in your world with the Cybermen, it didn't happen here."

That had been a bloody night. One that they had barely escaped with their lives. Cybermen everywhere, invading the Hub from within. And all because Ianto Jones was naïve enough and desperate enough to believe that the Cybermen wouldn't feed him to their conversion chamber, and that they'd take out the implants they'd already installed in his girlfriend, if he helped them get inside Torchwood Three.

Owen felt cold metal fingers around his throat and shivered reflexively. He remembered that night as clearly as if it was yesterday. How a quiet night had turned deadly as, without warning, the Hub had been overrun.

He'd almost died that night. He would have died if Toshiko hadn't worked some kind of computer voodoo that had sent a virus through the cyber-controller hidden in the sub-basement. He'd been seconds away from being stuffed into a cyber-conversion unit when everything, including the Cyberman holding him by the neck, had gone up in a shower of sparks.

He remembered Suzie helping to prise loose those dead metal fingers from his throat. He remembered how, after they'd destroyed the alien machinery and consigned the bodies of Ianto Jones and Lisa Hallett to the freezer and incinerator, respectively, they had gone back to his flat. There, Suzie had held him until the shivering had stopped. Things had changed between them that night. Nearly losing his life had made them both see clearly that theirs wasn't the casual relationship they pretended it was.

Owen shut his eyes, forcing the memories away. He couldn't bear to think of Suzie. It hurt too much. He realised his hand had gone to his throat. The pads of his fingers were resting lightly against the underside of his jaw. Very deliberately, he lowered his arm to his side and regarded the other man. "But something did happen."

Jones nodded. "It was a long time ago, and in retrospect, I acted foolishly. But instead of executing me, as would have been his right, Jack Harkness gave me the opportunity to make amends for my foolishness. And eventually, I was forgiven."

"So that makes what happened in my world better, does it?"

Jones shook his head. "No, it doesn't, but I can't help that. Each of us make the choices we make, and we live with the consequences. I don't know if somewhere out there there's a Ianto Jones Prime whose choices put me on all these diverging pathways, but even if there is, his life isn't mine, and I can't be held responsible for the outcome of his decisions." He gave Owen a polite smile. "Now if we've got that settled, I've come to deliver this from the Science Section." He held out a black leather case. "You're meant to wear it at all times until instructed otherwise. I'm also to escort you to your quarters. Once you're settled, Jack wants to see you in his office."

"Still Jack's errand boy, are you?"

Jones shrugged. "In a manner of speaking. I'm his Second-in-Command."

It just got better and better, Owen thought to himself grimly. He'd landed in a universe where the mad men ran the asylum. "Not the tea boy, then?" he said as he struggled to wrap his head around this new and less than welcome revelation.

"No," Jones replied mildly, refusing to rise to the bait. "Now, if you'd be so good as to put on that monitor, we can continue your orientation elsewhere."

Owen flipped open the case. The device inside looked like an overly complicated wristwatch, the kind worn by blokes with something to prove. The dial was almost as wide as his forearm. He rolled the strap around his wrist and buckled it on. A small light located underneath the time and date displays began to blink green at ten second intervals. "What's that mean?"

Jones glanced at his wrist. "Just that the monitor is functioning normally. Rest assured, Dr Harper, monitoring is strictly a precaution."

"Monitoring what, exactly?" The device itself wasn't offering much in the way of clues.

"Subatomic particles," Jones explained. "There was some debate amongst the physicists whether or not you would be the source of an interdimensional instability. Or perhaps you would be able to detect them. All above my head, really. You need to address your questions to Mark Landers, our head technician."

"Yeah," Owen said. "I'll do that." Precaution or no, the monitor on his arm didn't give him a warm feeling. Maybe they were genuinely interested in monitoring the levels of muons and leptons. Maybe they just wanted to keep an electronic leash on him, and this was a cagey way of doing so. Different dimension or not, this was still Torchwood.

And in this universe, he was the alien.


	2. Chapter 2

* * * 

Dark grey clouds scudded across the sky. Wind caught the edges of his jacket, sending them fluttering. Owen noticed both absently as he watched Flat Holm recede into the distance. The _Sea Queen_ picked up speed as they cleared the harbour, but she still maintained a leisurely pace, and the boat rolled gently under his feet.

Owen zipped his jacket, and then jammed his hands into the pockets to warm them. He'd had the grand tour of the hospital and residential home for wayward Rift travellers, and found himself more than a little impressed. There was no similar facility in his world. There, Rift returnees were handled much more expeditiously: they were either kicked loose to fend for themselves, or if their mental or physical injuries were too great to explain away, they were consigned to the freezer. Here they were offered a refuge; a place to heal. If they had been sent back into their own pasts, they had a place to hide out until they could be safely returned to resume their lives, so they wouldn't damage the timestream.

A month or so wandering around the island, cataloguing native plants and watching birds whilst he got his head around his new life, probably would have been a prudent plan of action. Despite the cool front he was showing to those around him, Owen was still reeling. In fact, he wasn't entirely positive that the entire experience wasn't some sort of complex death dream, constructed by his subconscious as a way to ease his mind as he was shuffled off the mortal coil.

But if this altered version of Cardiff and Torchwood was a trick of his mind, it was certainly an elaborate one. It was possible that, in his dying moments. he might have imagined a better world, a more humane Torchwood, but he knew he wasn't capable of this level of detail. It wasn't in him to conjure salt spray and the scent of incoming rain.

He pushed off the rail and turned his back on the rocky cliffs and green vistas of the island. The doctors and staff at the sanctuary had rolled out the red carpet as they'd shown him around. They said they would welcome him into their ranks, if he wanted to have a busman's holiday and spend some of his time working on the wards. Jack had hinted strongly enough that he thought it was a good idea.

But retreating felt too much like cowardice, like admitting that he couldn't cope. He didn't want to think about what he had lost. He didn't want to talk about it. If he was going to be a part of this new world then he wanted to get on with it.

In Cardiff, at Torchwood Three, there was a lab in one of the refurbished tunnels with his name over the door. There were alien plants to study, and bodies to dissect. He could bury himself in work and then, at the end of the day, emerge from the underground complex to seek out the company of strangers. He could drink, shoulder to shoulder with them, until he put his ghosts to rest, and then disappear back into the shadows. It seemed a much better way to come to grips than navel gazing.

He glanced around the deck of the boat, and saw that Jack and Ianto were standing huddled close together in the stern. Jack had his arm draped casually over Ianto's shoulders. He laughed over something Ianto said, ruffled his hair, and then he darted in for a kiss.

The kiss started out as a casual peck, but it quickly evolved into something much more intimate. He looked away, knowing he was witness to a private moment. Though he'd been reflexively hostile upon their first meeting, Owen was coming to a grudging realisation that this Jones really was not the same man who had been executed for crimes against humanity. This Ianto Jones had earned the respect of his colleagues, and the admiration of the staff at the Flat Holm facility. He had also, it seemed, won Jack's heart, and clearly loved Jack in return.

Owen wondered if that was why his Jack had never been quite the same after the night he'd put a bullet into that other Ianto Jones' brain. Never really a happy man, for a time Jack had become even more withdrawn and quiet, seldom laughing or smiling. He left a great deal of the day to day affairs of Torchwood to Suzie, and then a few months later, he had just up and left without any warning, leaving them wondering if his confrontation with Abaddon had pushed him too far and finally broken him completely.

This Jack's laugh boomed out over the water, breaking Owen's reverie and drawing him back into the present. The city was closer now, he could see people on the quay going about their business. Despite the soon to be inclement weather, tourists milled, watching the boats. Joggers huffed and puffed and glanced at their heart rate monitors. It was all perfectly normal, and yet it was also peculiarly alien, and Owen almost regretted his decision not to remain on Flat Holm with the rest of the broken returnees.

* * * 

Andy was glad to be out of the Hub. It might be a grey and rainy night. It might be Ely. The locals might be regarding the plain, dark blue cargo van with vaguely hostile intentions, but it was still miles better than being sat at his desk back at base.

At the Hub, people were in shock, walking around with vague, gobsmacked expressions as they tried to wrap their heads around the notion that the Rift was more than a vacuum tube whose mouth sucked things up from random points in time and space. In his view, that was disturbing enough. This latest revelation was just a new complication in something that was already over his head. Not to cast aspersions upon his more technical colleagues, but even if the walls of space and time were in the process of shredding, it just didn't matter. Until that happened, they still had a job to do. There were still artefacts that had to be kept out of the public's hands, and there were still displaced people who needed their help.

But then again, keeping his head down and his mind on the job had been drilled into his head since he was a young copper. He might be older, and the beat might have changed, but it was still good advice. It was advice he had reinforced as he gave the beginning-of-watch briefing to the teams of agents he dispatched in unmarked vans to cover the city. Multiple events had been predicted, and Andy wanted his people on the spot in case whatever, or whoever, came through the Rift was a danger to the public.

He glanced over at Heather McCloud, his technical assistant for the watch. She was on the second leg of a double shift and was taking advantage of the lull. Curled on the seat next to him, with her legs tucked underneath her, she was using her hands as a pillow against the glass, sound asleep. When she was awake, she was vivacious, always talking a mile a minute about her work or some new computer game. In sleep, with her dark, springy curls falling over her cheek, she looked much younger than her thirty years. She made him feel ancient. Worse, she made him feel protective and paternal. It was an odd feeling, and Andy wondered if he and Felicity should stop talking about having a family of their own and actually take the leap. It wasn't the sort of thing they could put off much longer. Not if he didn't want to chase his prospective kiddie around the park with a walking stick in hand.

The mobile Rift monitor mounted into the control console chimed softly. Heather stirred and then straightened, instantly awake. She ran a hand over her face, rubbing sleep from her eyes, and then reflexively combed loose strands of dark hair out of her face before glancing down at the telemetry feed to study the display.

"Metal. About two meters in length. And it looks like it's one street over," she reported.

"Right." Andy cranked the engine and ground the gears as he put the van into drive. Rain flew sideways off the windscreen as he activated the wipers, just as a cloud opened up overhead with particular vengeance. Despite the rain, they needed to move quickly. Scroungers and opportunists roamed the estate. They were sharp operators, light of finger and fleet of foot, and they didn't necessarily care what it was they were hauling away, as long as it looked like something that would earn them a few quid from a scrapyard or pawnshop.

"Left!" Heather called out. "Not much farther. It should be just ahead."

Andy nodded and turned the wheel hard. He pulled up to the kerb, grimaced as he lowered the window far enough to get spattered by rain, and then panned the street with a high intensity torch. He groaned when he saw what had triggered the alert. "I hate these things," he muttered when he saw the long, dull grey cylinder that sat next to a dilapidated swing set. He rolled up the window and put the van back into gear, pulling as close as he could to the gated entrance of children's playground before cutting the engine. "Mind the panel," he instructed as he got out of the van. "The last thing either of us need is a ticking off from Drew for violating safety procedure."

The glare Heather gave him suggested she was mildly insulted at the notion they might cock up, but then she shrugged it off as she pulled on a pair of gloves and zipped her jacket until the collar was close around her throat. With a dark glance at the sheeting rain, she braced herself and then opened the door, scurrying with her meter extended to take a scan of the tube and the surrounding area, adding more precise readings to the broad scope telemetry data that was being collected at the Hub.

Within a few seconds, Heather's hair was matted flat against her skull, as rain continued to pour down. When she looped the strap of the meter around her neck, letting it fall against her chest, it was a tacit All Clear. Andy adjusted his driving gloves, flexing his fingers so the leather adhered to them like a second skin, and then hustled to the head of the tube. "I'll take this side."

Heather wasn't fooled. She knew that despite his warning, he was taking the greater share of risk. Though the diagnostic control panel was on the side of the tube, it was close enough to the top that someone trying to shift the device could potentially trigger it. She moved to the foot of the tube and then smiled at him. "Don't forget to lift with your knees when we boost it into the van, sir," she said sweetly.

"Don't be cheeky," Andy replied gruffly as the paternal feeling caught him in the chest and made it hard to speak. He ducked his head, ostensibly to keep the rain from his eyes, but mostly in bemusement. Wouldn't Felicity have a laugh when he confessed that _he_ was the one getting broody.

Moving the cloning tubes had become a lot simpler once they had discovered the anti-gravity controls. He found the switch and depressed it, and then took a step backwards as the tube rose until it floated a foot above the ground.

A group of curious lads, dressed in hoodies and baseball caps skewed sideways, sauntered into view. Andy gave them a sharp look that suggested they keep right on walking. Once they were clear, he nodded at Heather and, between them, they guided the tube past the slide and a sad looking pair of graffiti-defaced rocking horses, into the van.

It fit, barely, which was good enough. Heather got on the radio and notified mission control that they were heading in, as Andy secured the pod into place.

On the Emergency Services band, the dispatcher requested a Torchwood unit meet constables in Bute Park near the main gate. Urgent assistance was required.

Andy frowned as he listened to the call. It was going to be a long night.

* * *

Owen woke up earlier than he needed to and stared up at the ceiling of his temporary quarters. This Torchwood believed in housing its staff comfortably when they were working all hours. They'd converted a wing of long abandoned offices into a dormitory. There, new recruits could be segregated from the outside world while they were in training, field agents – who spent most of their time outside of Cardiff – could have a place to stay while they were reporting in, and researchers could nap as they ran sensitive experiments that required periodic monitoring.

After he'd gone through the ritual of rolling over, pounding the pillow, and then rolling over again, Owen realised he wasn't going to go back to sleep.

He got up.

There was a communal bathroom two doors down. He put on the dressing gown they'd thoughtfully provided, and then padded down the corridor in his bare feet to shower and shave and otherwise make himself presentable. He knew, as he dressed in more Torchwood-issued clothing, that eventually he'd have to get out, or maybe go online and order what he needed in, but he wasn't quite feeling ready to deal with the day to day world of shops and queues.

He was still disorientated, trying to get his head round not being dead. It wasn't his first near-death experience, and if he continued working for Torchwood, he doubted that it would be his last, but he no longer had Suzie to ground him, and he felt especially off balance. In his final dream before waking, Owen had been personally selected by Death to be his toy. Death had played with him, like a cat did with a mouse; tormenting him, for no other reason than because it was fun. It made no sense, not that dreams ever did, but it didn't stop Owen from wondering if maybe there was a grain of truth at its heart, and that someone, somewhere, had it in for him.

He glanced down at the monitor on his wrist. The green light still blinked annoyingly at ten second intervals, but the nearly indecipherable leaflet, helpfully provided in the case, had revealed a number of surprisingly useful functions. In addition to being keyed to his personal universe, the device also contained a GPS function, which he activated. He fitted his new Bluetooth earpiece comfortably and then said, "Lab."

A tiny grid map appeared on the dial. It guided him down the hallway, and to the lift and stairs at the end of the corridor. He choose the lift and travelled up two levels until he reached the science bloc. He sauntered the rest of the way, as if he had a right to be there. Which, of course, he did. Not that it stopped him from feeling like a trespasser. Nor did it stop the whispers or the covert looks he received. Finally, sufficiently irritated, Owen spun around. He held out his arms and said, "That's right, have a good look. Dead man walking. Right here."

A couple of very junior looking technicians scurried into their laboratories. For a few brief moments, Owen felt uncommonly satisfied by their terrified squeaks and red-faced expressions of embarrassment, but the feeling faded by the time he got to the end of the corridor. With a sigh, he pressed his palm against the reader and let himself into his new lab. When he switched on the lights, he whistled appreciatively.

Everything gleamed, from the stainless steel refrigeration cabinets, to the polished granite tables. Owen shut the door behind him and then he took the grand tour. He poked through the cupboards to see what was already stocked. He flipped switches on microscopes and X-ray machines. He surveyed the stores of Petri dishes, slides, and test tubes, and decided that, just maybe, he might enjoy his new life. 

There was a white lab coat hanging in the cupboard. Owen slipped it on over his new, pale blue collared shirt and navy Dockers, and admired himself in the mirror. He looked quite the man of science. Now all he needed was a research project of his own.

The wrist monitor beeped the quarter hour, reminding him that he had places to be. He took a final glance at the mirror and decided that it was time Torchwood was properly introduced to Doctor Owen Harper. He smoothed the lines of the lab coat, and then once more allowed the GPS to be his guide as he headed upstairs for his first morning briefing.

* * *

Drew had a desk with the rest of the investigators, upstairs in the nondescript office portion of the Hub, but he seldom used it. He preferred to run training programmes or to work out in the field as part of a team. But paperwork necessitated settling at a desk occasionally, or at least being in front of a computer, so since he had to attend the morning briefing anyway, he had taken his laptop downstairs to the main conference room to review the incident reports from the previous shift.

The Rift had been active and it had been a busy night. Six artefacts had been recovered. A new shoal of Blowfish had landed in town, bent on painting it red. Constables from the Heddlu, backed up by Torchwood agents, had caught up with them, and now four of the rabble-rousers were cooling their fins down in the cells.

There had been three altercations with weevils. A police constable and a well-meaning civilian had sustained serious injuries during one of the scuffles. He glanced at the projected Rift activity report for the next forty-eight hours and ran a hand through his hair, noting absently that his curls were getting mop-like. He needed to find twenty minutes and go get them cut.

There were quiet footsteps from behind him. Drew glanced at his watch. "Morning, Ianto."

A cup of coffee appeared at his elbow. "I thought I might find you up here," Ianto said by way of greeting.

"I'm getting predictable," Drew replied. He lifted the mug and sipped. "Valet service from management." He gave Ianto a speculative glance. "You need a favour. What is it?"

Ianto's lips twisted into an ironic smile. "Now who's the predictable one?" He nodded. "As it happens, I do. Jack wants Owen brought online as quickly and as painlessly as possible. I was hoping you might take him down to the range after the briefing?"

"The boss wants to let him loose in the field?" Drew didn't want to question their boss's judgement, but it seemed like an ill-considered idea to him. "Isn't this a bit hasty? Not to get officious, but given his circumstances, shouldn't we take a few more days to vet him?"

"Normally, I'd agree," Ianto replied. "But he's passed his medical, and he's not a raw recruit. He's a fully qualified Torchwood operative, at least according to the standards of his Torchwood. Now we need to know if he'll measure up to ours."

The medical staff, including the shrinks on Flat Holm, had given their blessing. Sciences hadn't red carded him either. Rather than locking Harper in a cell or one of the test bays, they had let him run loose. It seemed as if he was the only one left with reservations, and those weren't anything tangible enough to form into a valid argument. Spending some time with Harper might help ease his mind. Given that the bulk of his day was going to be spent down in the armoury doing weapons certifications, he supposed he could fit in a one-on-one session before agents started trickling in to use the range. 

So much for nipping out for a haircut.

Drew nodded. "Fair enough. I'll take him with me after the briefing." 

"Thank you. Speaking of which – "

Ianto glanced at his pocket watch just as the sound of muted conversation trickled in from the corridor. A moment later, Felicity and Andy came into view. They waved their greetings and then headed straight to the sideboard for coffee. Both of them had pulled overnight field shifts, and it showed in their postures. Andy put extra sugar in his coffee. Never a good sign. It meant he was beat, but wasn't planning on heading home any time soon, and he was hoping caffeine and sugar would give him the lift he needed for a few more hours.

Close on their heels was Mark, who was engaged in a one-sided conversation. Since there was a Bluetooth in his ear, he was on the phone rather than thinking out loud, as he sometimes did when wrestling with complex problems. Drew recognised two words in a long sentence and then tuned out. The conversation was in jargon, and over his head. If whatever Mark was discussing was relevant to the briefing, he'd break it down into simple terms, and translate it into English when it was his turn to give an update.

Drew skimmed the rest of the shift reports and scanned a couple of priority coded emails as the rest of the department heads, or their representatives, filtered in, helped themselves at the sideboard, and took their places at the table. Jack was last. Or almost last. The room went dead quiet as Dr Harper entered the room. He stood at attention and saluted. There was a subtly sarcastic flourish as he snapped his hand against his forehead.

"Reporting as instructed."

Jack smiled widely, either missing the sarcasm, or choosing to ignore it. Andy had interacted with Harper when he was a constable in uniform, and the memories Drew had inherited were those of dealing with a jumped up little tosser. It looked like this Owen Harper had similar tendencies. "Good to have you, Owen." He gestured at one of the few open spots at the table. "Grab a chair and we can get started."

Harper went for the coffee carafe first, helping himself to a cup loaded with milk and sugar, and then he sauntered over to the table and sat down between Felicity, and Pearl from Communications.

"Ladies," he said, and then busied himself stirring his coffee.

"Dr Harper," Felicity replied politely. Pearl flashed a professional smile and then went back to whatever had captured her attention on the tablet in front of her.

Jack tapped a spoon against the side of his mug, calling the room to order. "Okay people, listen up. Half of you have been up all night and the rest of you are in for a long slog, so let's get down to business. Mark, what's happening out at Turnmill?"

"We've got some good news there, boss," Mark said. There was a collective sigh of relief, which he met with a cheery smile. "I know. I know. That was the last thing you were expecting to hear. The good news is the walls between dimensions aren't coming crashing down, at least not through a breach at Turnmill. The less good news is that according to our preliminary findings, it appears that Dr Harper isn't the first arrival through a TDB."

"TDB?" Harper asked.

Mark shrugged and smiled apologetically. "Sorry. Jargon. Trans-Dimensional Breach. Our current theory, based on comparing the readings we took at the time of Dr Harper's arrival, to those collected from past historical data, is that TDBs have been occurring since the Abaddon incident, a little more than seven years ago."

"Thank you, Billis Manger," Ianto said with quiet savagery. 

Drew didn't know who that was, but he made a mental note to look the name up. In his book, anyone who could provoke that kind of reaction from Ianto Jones was a person of interest.

"We've found two cases in the records at Providence Park that match the criteria for TDRs," Mark added. "Donald Green and Bethany Chase. They were treated for breakdowns and eventually released back into the general population. Fortunately, in both instances, neither person had close ties to Cardiff, and searches on the national database revealed that their analogues from this continuum were listed as missing. Police records suggested strongly that both were likely dead."

"Coincidence?" Jack asked.

Mark shrugged again. "We don't know. There's not enough data to say one way or the other. There's also nothing to suggest what might happen, other than a considerable degree of confusion, if counterparts were to meet up with one another. We don't know if the time displacement model of paradox will hold or not under TDB circumstances."

"Yeah, well, let's hope we don't find out any time soon," Andy said.

There was a general mutter of agreement around the table. 

"Moving on," Jack said, bringing the room swiftly back to order. "Anything interesting to report from last night?"

Andy held up a hand. "Coastal section picked up a wrecked single occupant space ship, fighter class."

"Repairable or scrap?" Ianto asked.

"The lads are still making their evaluation," Andy said. "But from what I saw, it could go either way."

"Burning Hollow?" Ianto said to Jack.

Jack pulled an indecisive face. Given his love of tinkering, Drew suspected he was tempted to keep the wreck as a side project. His suspicion was confirmed when he said, "Let me have a look see and I'll let you know."

Drew watched as across the table as Harper nudged Felicity's arm and mouthed, "Burning Hollow?"

Felicity whispered back, "Secondary Hub."

Drew made a note of Harper's knit brows. Evidentially his Torchwood didn't have such a facility.

Ianto's expression became one of tolerant amusement. "I'll have them move it from Holding to Repair Bay Two." He glanced up at Andy. "Anything else?"

"Everything else was sent for classification. Except for one thing." Andy's expression soured. "01:30 hours we recovered a cloning pod from Ely."

* * * 

"Cloning pod." After wandering through a world that almost, but not quite, meshed with his own, Owen pounced on Andy's announcement that Torchwood had come across something familiar. "At least some things never change."

"You know about the cloning pods?" "You know about them?" Andy and Drew spoke practically on top of one another, which was a bit weird, but the others seemed not to notice. The pair exchanged very troubled looks before shifting their total attention to him.

Owen shrugged. "We had so many of the damn things come through that we had to put aside a special section in the Archives. Bit of a nuisance, shifting them down to the lower levels, but I'll have to admit, unlike the rest of the junk we dragged back, they proved to be dead handy."

"How so?" Jack asked guardedly.

Owen chuckled as he remembered their first encounter with a cloning pod. "When the first one came through, Suzie accidentally cloned herself. She was none too pleased, let me tell you. One Suzie Costello was a handful. Two of them – "

He recalled Suzie squaring off with herself during a briefing and smiled fondly. "Truth is, she couldn't stand the competition. Suzie II ended up in the freezer for safekeeping. But after our Suzie calmed down a bit, and she realised their potential, those pods became something of a pet project."

Owen glanced up to meet Jack's gaze and found that he was hanging on every word.

Seeing the intentness of this Jack's gaze brought back unpleasant memories, and he sobered. The cloning pods hadn't always been the source of comedy gold. There had been too many long nights spent watching Suzie as she prised apart the pod and made it give up its secrets. Those were wasted nights that they should have spent in much more entertaining pursuits. Suzie's obsession had had almost finished them. They had spent nearly as much time arguing about her fixation on the pod as having sex. And a few times, they had done both simultaneously. In retrospect, their relationship had been passionate, but unhealthy.

"Truth be told, she got a bit obsessed. Jack, that is to say, my Jack, got worried enough that he insisted she take some accumulated leave."

Jack had saved them. Even though they were already criminally undermanned, he had insisted that Owen take Suzie away. Two weeks touring the lavender fields, and seeing the other picturesque sights of Provence, had restored his Suzie's mental equilibrium. A crisis, the day after their return, had validated her conviction that the pod was a worthy object for her obsession.

"It pains me to say it," Owen confessed, "but in the end, Suzie was right. The pod was useful. It came in dead handy when the Lady Mayoress got her head torn off by a weevil."

Ianto frowned. "I don't understand. If the Mayoress was already dead, how did the cloning pod help?"

Owen shot Ianto an impatient glare. "Then keep your hair on because I'm getting there. Suzie had discovered that the pods have multiple settings. If one wants perfection, there's the precision duplication mode, which essentially grows an exact copy. But if you needed to knock together a double in a hurry, there's a mode for that too." Met with uniform looks of incomprehension, he sighed and tried to explain. "They're like wind up dolls. They look like the person. They can walk and talk and take instructions, but they're only approximations." 

The expressions of those sitting around the conference table became repulsed or fascinated, and in a few instances, a curious admixture of both.

"The grunts, as Suzie called them, could be replicated in a few hours. So she knocked one up to use as a body double, which we then whisked off to hospital, while she incubated a shiny new copy of the Lady Mayoress."

Jack leant forward and gave Owen a sideways glance. "But you said she was dead. Her head had been torn off."

Owen held up a finger, silencing the muttering that had started up around the conference table. "That was another one of the pod's secrets that Suzie unlocked. It doesn't take a live person to act as a template. As long as the body is fresh, with a minimum level of decay, it still works." He shrugged. "Of course the clone requires a dose of Retcon to obliterate the memory of their death. The trauma gave the first test subjects howling cases of PTSD."

"These _grunts_ , do they have a shortened lifespan?" Felicity asked.

Owen nodded. "Suzie had to do a bit a tinkering to work out their life cycles. The first ones tended to pop their clogs pretty quickly. But she managed to extend their runtime long enough to keep them breathing until a proper substitution could be made."

"Disturbing, but expedient," Ianto commented. "Worthy of our own Suzie."

Jack shot a grudging look of agreement at Ianto, but then he returned his attention to the buzz of conversation around him.

"The drop in missing persons and unexplained deaths would justify the use of alien technology," Drew commented over the murmur of debate.

Unless Andy really did have a cousin who bore an uncanny resemblance, it seemed obvious to Owen that Drew was a clone. If anyone's opinion should be held above others, it was his. He watched and waited as Jack ruminated over the apparent advantages versus the ethical considerations, much as his Jack had done the night of the Lady Mayoress's murder.

Jack let the others talk amongst themselves a little longer before he made up his mind. Then he held up a hand to quiet the discussion. "Owen, are you familiar enough with Suzie's work to duplicate it?"

Owen nodded. In an effort to keep the peace in his domestic life, he'd spent long hours bent over a gene sequencer, analysing clones in various stages of development, and otherwise made himself useful. That was until he'd got frustrated, and left Suzie to her own devices.

"Then that's your first assignment, Dr Harper," Jack said. "Generate a detailed manual, everything you know about those cloning pods. After that, once we have a better understanding, we can weigh the pros and cons of possible implementation." 

Owen wasn't really interested in the briefing after that. This was Torchwood. The Rift spit out rubbish and they cleaned it up again, retconning any witnesses who managed to get under foot. It was boring. And until someone said otherwise, it didn't concern him. He drank his coffee and marked time until Jack called, "Dismissed."

And then all hell broke loose.

* * * 

As if things weren't complicated enough, Mark thought, when word came up from Tracking that they'd received and verified a ping from a far range satellite. The satellite was one of a series of small, self-energising sentinel devices pieced together from alien technology. Interstellar travellers, some of who owed Torchwood favours, and some others who would someday expect favours in return, dropped them in strategic positions. They had one purpose. It was simple, and it was important. They listened for signals generated by spacefaring ships, because Jack hated to be caught flat-footed. He wanted advance warning when visitors came calling.

"Boss," he announced over the chatter and scrape of chairs. "We have incoming traffic on frequency 456."

In the process of getting up, Jack froze midway out of his chair. His face paled underneath his tan. He looked stricken as he sat back down again. 

Ianto was immediately at his side. Sombre didn't even begin to describe his expression until, with effort, he carefully blanked his face, assuming a mask of bland indifference. He returned to his own place at the table and called everyone back to order.

"Range?" As shocked as he had been by the news, Jack managed to pull himself back under control fairly well. His posture became ramrod straight, and his voice held only a slight undercurrent of tension, as he waited for the answer to his query.

Mark requested additional information. He kept his head down, staring at the table as he did a mental inventory of projects and their status. For years, ever since he'd arrived at Torchwood, defence from hostile alien invaders had been his secondary focus, right behind gaining a thorough understanding of the mechanics of the Rift. Now his understanding of the one was being severely tested, and what had been merely a theoretical problem, in the case of the 456, was now anything but.

"Three blips just passed Pluto, on course for Earth. ETA at current vector and speed, forty-eight hours."

He switched on the viewscreen and transferred the telemetry from the tracking satellite. The room went even more quiet as everyone contemplated the trio of blips.

"Trouble, I take it?" Harper said.

"You could say that, Owen." Jack replied with grim certainty. "The 456 are trouble of the worst kind. Ianto, get UNIT on the phone. It's time for some of that mutual cooperation. And then get a hold of Stuart in London and initiate Contingency Plan A."

Mark watched as Jack gave Ianto a protracted look, which their Second returned. The pair locked gazes, arguing silently for almost half a minute before Ianto grudgingly nodded. Mark understood Ianto's concerns; kidnapping government ministers seemed an extreme measure. But Jack had history with the 456, and he wasn't taking chances.

"Strictly as a precaution. Andy. I know you just came off shift, but I want you out at Burning Hollow to oversee operations. As of now we're on full alert. I want the dust sheets pulled and the hangar doors open. Got it? Drew. Recall everyone not on active assignment. All leave is cancelled. Felicity, I want you to have a quiet word with the civilian authorities. It's long past time they had a disaster drill. Tell them to prep, just in case, for a Level 4 emergency."

Andy and Felicity exchanged tense looks, and then philosophical shrugs, before both of them rose and left the conference room. Drew pulled his laptop close and started typing.

Jack pointed at the viewscreen. "Mark. I want that telemetry on every monitor in the Hub. Don't let them out of sight."

"You make it sound like you're expecting an invasion," Harper said.

"You're not wrong there," Jack replied. "Move, people. The fate of the planet depends on us."

"What about me?" Harper asked.

Jack looked as if he'd forgotten all about him and then he smiled a dangerous smile. "Get to work, Dr Harper. Your research project just got pushed to the top of the priority pile." He turned to Ianto, who was typing rapidly into a tablet. "Make sure he gets what he needs."

* * *

On his way back to his lab, Owen listened to the gossip with a keen ear. The buzz that surrounded his mysterious arrival was nothing compared to that accompanying the news that the 456 were heading towards Earth. The Hub sounded like an angry hive. Even their pet pterodactyl seemed upset, swooping overhead, and hooting fractiously.

It seemed no one knew exactly who the 456 were, other than alien and hostile. What was known was they had come to Earth decades earlier, and whatever had happened then hadn't sat well with Captain Harkness. When he saw a dark-haired woman, in her early thirties, dressed in the same sort of nondescript professional clobber as the rest of her peers, spit on the floor at the mention of their name, Owen's curiosity got the better of him. He touched the woman on the shoulder and gave her a friendly smile. "Excuse me, Agent – "

"Agi." She looked at him curiously. "You're that bloke who came through the Rift, aren't you?"

Owen nodded. "Yes. That's right. Dr Owen Harper, at your service." He inclined his head politely. "And as you might imagine, I'm a little lost about what's going on. These 456. Who are they, exactly? I've never heard of them before."

Despite the spitting, Agent Agi was a very attractive woman. There was an aura of energy and spirit about her that reminded him of Suzie. A dull, aching feeling of grief caught him unexpectedly, and he had to look away.

"You all right, sir?"

"Yeah. Fine. Fine. You reminded me of someone." He pushed the feeling down and away, and told himself that mourning was for saps who hung onto their pasts, because they were too stupid to see the potential of their futures. He gave Agi a half-hearted smile. "As you might imagine, that's been happening a lot to me lately."

Agi nodded uncertainly. "It's been a long shift and I could use a cup of tea. Why don't we go to the canteen and I'll try and give you the full SP, at least as I understand it."

Owen smiled his gratitude. "If you're not too busy."

Agi looked like she was fresh in from the field. Her dark blue trouser suit was tired and crumpled and more than a bit muddy around the cuffs. There were fatigue lines around her mouth and eyes. Given the current crisis, a cup of strong, sweet tea, along with a sandwich, a shower, and a couple of hours kip pending redeployment, had probably been her action plan. "I was heading there anyway," she said. "It's no bother."

The canteen was located down a short corridor off the main level of the Hub. Owen had taken his supper there the night before. It was an efficient layout of glass-fronted cabinet fridges tucked underneath a long, stainless steel counter. Rows of tables that sat six were arranged under safety-caged halogen lamps that hung on long poles retrofitted into a white plaster ceiling. The coffee and tea were always on. Snack food was plentiful. And no matter the time of day, there was something filling available that could be either microwaved or eaten cold. The room was sparsely populated by people either talking animatedly, or staring down into their tablets or smartphones, as they absently consumed their breakfasts.

Agi hung her backpack on a peg by the door, and then headed straight for the self-service buffet. She took a large iced pastry from a warming tray, a carton of orange juice from the fridge, and then poured a mug of tea from the stainless steel urn, fortifying it heavily with milk and sugar, before carrying it all on a tray over to an empty table.

Owen contented himself with a croissant and a coffee and sat down across from her. He let her get a few mouthfuls of breakfast and then asked, "So, Agi is it? Are you a field agent?"

"Dev," she said as she pulled apart a cinnamon twist into manageable bites. "My front name is Dev. And yeah. Well, sort of. I'm an EMT when I've got field rota. Otherwise I'm a lab tech in the medical group."

"Are you now." Owen eyed Dev speculatively. He could use a capable assistant trained in laboratory and medical procedure.

Dev nodded. She took a big swallow from the juice carton, looked around at the room full of drawn and serious faces, and said, "You ever get a feeling? A real, in your gut, knot in the pit of your stomach, feeling that something big is about to happen?"

Owen nodded, and then he shrugged. "Sure. I suppose so. Doesn't everyone?"

Dev leant forward. Her irises were so dark they were nearly black. Her face was lit with a grim sort of certainty. "I think this is it. This is the event the Captain's been telling us to be ready for."

"I don't understand," Owen said. His Jack, even after he came back from his sabbatical, hadn't been much for preparing for any sort of a future calamity. He had seemed happy enough that they survived from one day to the next.

"It's like this," Dev looked down into her mug as she tried to put her thoughts into words. She tilted her head towards her fellow agents. "This lot, most of them are still green. They've been here a year, maybe two."

"But not you?"

"Not me. I'm old guard." She pulled a face, as if she wasn't getting what she wanted to say right. "Well, practically speaking, anyway. The Captain and Ianto, they're the old guard. There was Gwen, but she got hurt and was pensioned out."

Dev's expression went pensive and then it smoothed out again. "The thing was, at first it was just Andy and Flis, that's Dr Porter, and Mark and me. We were the new recruits." She waved at the room at large in what was probably meant as an all encompassing gesture. "We did this. I helped Mark wire those fridges. Andy and Ianto painted this room. Truth be told, when I first got here, Torchwood was in a bad way. But we worked hard and we turned it into what it is."

"And what is that?" Owen asked.

"It's a force for good," Dev replied with conviction. "A force to be reckoned with. Sure, in the grand scheme of things, we're a drop in the ocean. Between here and Flat Holm and Burning Hollow and a few special units spaced out across the UK, there's probably a hundred of us. UNIT has bigger garrisons dedicated to marching in the parade on the Queen's birthday. But the few of us who are Torchwood, we make a real difference. We keep this planet safe, and we help those poor sods who get sucked up by the Rift – " Her eyes widened and her hand flew to cover her mouth. "Oh, God. Sorry! I didn't think."

Owen shook his head. He felt himself smiling like he meant it. "You're fine. Believe it or not, _poor sod_ just about sums me up to a tee. I'm lost and confused, and with the possible exception of the Captain, I haven't a friend in the world." He realised belatedly that he was flirting using the 'poor me' technique, and he felt his smile fade. Maybe he was a sap, after all. 

Fortunately, Dev was too occupied with her tea to notice. She smiled a grateful smile back at him in return. "Sorry. It's just some of the things I've seen." She shook her head and strands of glossy black hair came loose from the twist that was barely holding together against the nape of her neck. They fell to chin level to frame her face, and Owen revised his estimation of her age downward.

"I guess, what I'm trying to get at, is the Captain's always saying we have to be ready. So we got ready. We recruited and we trained and we worked hard. We've fought some tough customers, aliens like the Dra'switch, who would have enslaved the whole planet if it hadn't been for us. And we did it, for the most part, right under the noses of all those people out there. But this – " She looked up, meeting Owen's eyes squarely. "This feels like it. The big one." She looked around to see if anyone was paying attention and then leant forward. "And I think for the Captain, it's personal."

"How do you mean?" Owen asked, in an equally conspiratorial way.

Dev's expression grew guarded, as if maybe she had realised that, once again, she'd spoken out of turn. She swallowed more juice and then pushed back her chair. "If you'll excuse me, sir, I need to drop my gear and then report in."

Owen nodded and then watched as EMT/field agent/medical technician Dev Agi shouldered her kit bag and threaded her way out of the canteen, leaving him with more questions than when they'd sat down.

* * * 

"Martha!" Jack beamed into the telephone receiver. "My second favourite Jones. How are you? Where are you?"

"Worried," she replied bluntly. "And in London. What's going on, Jack? There's a whole lot of bigwigs behind locked conference room doors, and a lot of worried looks on their juniors' faces, but no one is talking."

"Trouble's coming to town, Martha Jones," Jack replied. "Bad trouble."

"The Doctor level?" Martha whispered, as if she didn't want to be overheard.

Jack hesitated. The 456 were the sort of menace the Doctor loved to swoop in on and then pull his Protector of Earth routine. He shook his head, even though Martha couldn't see him.

"Not this time. I think this time the ball's in our court." His conviction wavered. "Of course, keeping him on speed dial might not be the worst idea ever."

"Talk to me, Jack." It was easy to imagine all five feet two inches of Martha standing in front of him with her arms crossed, and her deep brown eyes gleaming with steely resolve. She wasn't going to let go until she got the information she wanted.

"Fine." Jack heaved a sigh. "Long story short, Sixty years ago, give or take a few, the British government was suckered into cooperating with a ring of alien extortionists, who were only known by the radio frequency 456. Also at the time, I was wallowing deep enough in self-pity that I went along with the plan instead of kicking up a fuss. Now the 456 are on their way, and this time, I'm not letting a bunch of self-serving government ministers and bureaucrats give in to their demands." 

"You sound like you're gearing up for a fight." There was a smile in Martha's voice, the sweet sound of an ally just waiting to be let in on the plan.

Jack felt his heart swell with love and admiration for the plucky woman who had once broken the spell of a madman through the power of her own convictions.

"You have no idea, Miss Martha, just how right you are."

Jack imagined Martha's smile as she replied, "Then you better tell me just how I can help."

* * *

Even though he'd rather be cloistered away in his office on the archive level, Ianto had set up his base of operations in the conference room. It was ideal as a command centre. Spacious and airy, it was big enough to accommodate the entire complement of senior staff members, and the large overhead screen could be programmed to split and show multiple views during briefings. Currently, it displayed a high definition map of Cardiff and its environs, and a representation of the solar system. Ianto looked up at the screen. Two teams were working containment operations offshore, one nearly on their doorstep out in the harbour, and another down the coastline near Barry. As for the 456, they had just passed Jupiter.

It was a day he thought would never come, not seriously, anyway, and now Ianto was quietly panicking. All those year's ago, when Jack had confessed his role in the 456 conspiracy, it had been a defining moment for them both. Jack had been able to purge himself of guilt that had festered for decades, and Ianto had finally found the leverage he needed to spur Jack into action. He had used the spectre of the 456 to persuade Jack that a handful of overworked people could never mount a serious defence. He had ruthlessly exploited Jack's need to repent for his part in the original 456 episode. Despite the occasional pang of remorse over taking advantage of Jack's pain, Ianto had never seriously regretted his determination to rebuild Torchwood.

Ianto was proud of Torchwood. It had been hard work, but the dilapidated facility had been refitted and refurbished. Its once empty tunnels and corridors hummed with activity. The new team of agents and researchers, instead of warehousing the flotsam and jetsam they recovered from the Rift, turned it into a resource to be exploited, applying the knowledge they gained to discreetly improve the human condition. The people who came through the Rift were handled better, too. Flat Holm had become a true sanctuary and oasis of support for the riftugees, and in some cases, for their families.

They had grown. But unlike Torchwood One, they had done so with heart and compassion. They had kept their mission of protecting the Earth front and centre while remembering that not every alien was a threat; that sometimes they were lost and eager to return home as well.

During all that time they'd studied the meagre available data on the 456. Jack had submitted to hypnosis to garner every detail his memory could offer up. They'd interviewed aliens, gleaning bits and pieces about the 456's modus operandi.

From Earth, the 456 had demanded children in exchange for a cure for a new variant of the Spanish flu. In retrospect, it seemed likely that the 456 had mutated the flu virus themselves.

From the T'lar they'd insisted on the eggs from a species of endangered bird. They offered to prevent the failure of an important grain harvest as an incentive.

On Shannish, their price was a pod of sacred fish in return for the cure for a lethal sweating fever.

Both the Captain of the T'lar ship and the medical officer from that of the Shannish had insisted that the timing of the disease outbreaks, coupled with the arrival of the 456, was highly suspicious. 

It appeared that their stand and deliver routine was typical. The carrot and stick approach, a favourite. The 456 liked biological weapons, and they weren't afraid to use them. They also had a talent for mind control, seizing vulnerable members of the populace as a demonstration of their power.

All in all they were a ruthless and formidable enemy.

No one knew precisely where the 456 came from. No one could describe them, at least not accurately. There were rumours they were survivors of a plague planet. That theirs was a disease-blasted world, savaged by contamination from a generations long biological war.

There were other rumours that it was the 456 who were diseased, and to prevent the spread of sickness to their home world they had been confined to their ships. Driven mad by whatever had infected them, they had broken quarantine to become a scourge upon whomever crossed their paths, trading in rare and precious goods to fund their nomadic existence.

Some of their informants speculated that the 456 were just garden variety pirates, who were especially good at lurking in the shadows until they found a new and vulnerable planet to exploit.

It _was_ known that the Shadow Proclamation was less than impressed with the 456's behaviour, and that the Judoon had been authorised to execute summary judgement should they capture 456 vessels. But the nearest Judoon brigade was light-years from Earth. Even though Ianto's first act after the briefing was to send a May Day, they wouldn't arrive in time to prevent the 456 from shaking down the planet.

Ianto sighed. In all the years since he'd beaten the confession of complicity out of Jack, he had never truly believed that the 456 would return. He had manipulated Jack by raising the spectre of the 456 and turning it into a Bogeyman. Now, it turned out the Bogeyman was real. He was on his way. And they still had no effective weapon to stop him.

He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. It didn't matter whether or not he believed in the return of the 456. He had helped build an organisation that was capable and resourceful. They had nurtured alliances amongst the alien community, and they had powerful friends in places that mattered, even if they did have to occasionally twist arms to get what was necessary.

The incoming call signal chimed on Ianto's phone. "Jones."

"London calling." It was Stuart Fraser, head of the unit that was known around the Hub as 'Arts and Antiques' because their primary function was to recover extraterrestrial artefacts that had made their way into the public sphere. They were also known as the 'Black Mask Brigade', because they were as likely to steal the contraband artefact as attend an auction at Christie's. Their versatility made them the ideal team for Contingency Plan A. "The goods have been acquired."

Ianto pinched the bridge of his nose. Now they'd done it. In the interest of protecting the planet, Torchwood had kidnapped the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary. He took a deep breath, let it out again, and then replied. "Then you'd better return to base."

He looked up at the split screen and saw yet another dot had appeared on the grid, this time in Grangetown. He'd had this nightmare before. Rift alert after Rift alert sounding. Running fruitlessly from one situation to another, trying to mitigate whatever damage was being done as penance for his failings. He wondered if that's what was happening. Was he asleep at Jack's side, caught up in a particularly vivid dream? Would he wake at Jack's gentle insistence, breathless and shaking as his heart pounded in helpless terror?

Ianto pinched himself. The pain was sharp and real.

The nightmare was real.

More dots blossomed on the screen.

The Rift was out of control and Cardiff was under siege.


	3. Chapter 3

* * * 

He'd give Jones credit for one thing, Owen thought. The man was efficient. Between the time the briefing had broken up, and his return to the lab, everything he needed to begin his assignment had been put into place. A cloning tube was positioned front and centre, next to a rack of test equipment that hadn't been present when he'd left. The tube had a barcode and an archive location on a paper label. Evidentially, it had been retrieved from level three, row nine, location twenty-four, wherever that was.

There was even a fresh box of pens, and a stack of laboratory notebooks on the desk, should he prefer to draft his notes by hand rather than computer. Owen nodded his approval. Tablets and computers had their place, but so did pen and paper. He uncapped a fresh pen, and then stuck it behind his ear, before going to the sink and carefully washing and drying his hands. He tore the top off a box of disposable gloves, and carried them with him as he circled the tube, reorientating himself.

It was just as he remembered it, thank God. The possibility that he wasn't the only one who was slightly different had entered Owen's mind the second after he had brazenly assured Captain Harkness that he could compose a functioning owner's manual, and his concern had escalated to a moderate state of anxiety during his journey back to the science bloc. 

The control panel was on the right side of the tube, close to the head. Owen was careful to avoid touching the device, although the service panel at the foot of the tube was open, and wires were exposed to show it had been manually disabled. There was another label, near the service panel, notating the initials and identification number of the technician who had rendered the tube safe.

Suzie had called the default setting 'Idiot mode'. Owen picked up a fresh laboratory notebook and opened it to the second page. He wrote 'Idiot Mode' at the top of the page and underlined the words twice. Then he wrote:

1: Stand in front of the machine's main console, with hand in a palm down position.

2: Put hand on scanner.

3: Get scanned.

4: Wait.

Strictly speaking, the short description was accurate, but lacking in detail. Suzie's investigation had revealed a micro-scalpel scraped skin cells, while simultaneously, blood was extracted into a series of pipettes that were finer than the width of a hair. A tomographic survey was made of the subject, and used as a template, so that the clone matched the original's overall appearance, minus any physical damage such as scarring, or other minor imperfections. As for what they did to the brain –

Owen sighed. He set the notebook down on the bench and rolled up his sleeves. He considered the problem of a pending invasion and decided, in a worse case scenario, that they might need a lot of boots on the ground in a big hurry. The only trouble was, he couldn't quite remember what Suzie had done to put the tube into 'Quick Cook' mode. He located a set of small machine tools and bent to reconnect the dangling power lines.

He was going to have to experiment.

* * * 

On the intake form there was a subsection called _Intelligence: Misc._ It was used to gather information unrelated to the case of an offworlder who had come into contact with Torchwood. The questions were generated on a weekly basis and then they were printed on orange sheets of paper and attached to the clipboards they used during interviews.

Sometimes the questions they asked had to do with criminal activity. Sometimes, they had to do with rumours floating around the alien community, as a way to stay abreast of situations before they turned troublesome. The only question that never changed was, _What do you know about the 456?_

Drew had asked the question scores of times, and more often than not, he was met by a blank stare. This wasn't overly surprising, not really. 456 was a radio frequency. It might have been unique to the alien extortionists who had used it decades previously, but then again, it might not. It might have been the first open frequency on the day they'd decided to contact Earth. He had Andy's memory of asking why it was so important that they gather information about the 456, and getting Jack's reply.

_Because they owe us, Andy. And somehow, I'd like to find a way to collect._

The _Intelligence: Misc_ section on the Blowfishes' intake forms had been left blank, which wasn't much of a surprise. According to the rest of the report, they'd been in a right state when they'd been apprehended. But what was once a question of passing interest, had now become one of vital importance. Any information they could glean about the 456 could be critical.

The four Blowfish were housed in a single large cell, rather than in the Fish Tank, the oversized aquarium in the lowest level of the Hub. The Fish Tank was a bit sketchy, in Drew's view, because in addition to housing aquatic guests, it was also used as a place to dump weevil kills, and other bodies with hard to explain damage, until a combination of water and time made determining a cause of death impossible.

The four were still in a sorry state, holding their oversized heads in their finned hands, as if they were pain. Drew might have felt sorry for them on some other day, but they'd sent two coppers to hospital, and he wasn't in the mood to be charitable.

Still, more flies with honey than with vinegar, he counselled himself.

"Morning, lads!" Drew gave the quartet a sympathetic smile. "Bit of a head, eh boys?"

His greeting was met with a collective groan. "When are you going to let us out of here?" the largest of the group asked. He was the one who had broken Constable Dawkins arm by throwing him across a car park. "If we're going to die then I want to be out of this stinkhole."

Drew felt his hackles raise. The cells weren't the most modern part of the Hub, but they were clean and well maintained. "We're working on transport, lads, but it might be a bit. We've got a situation up top."

His news was met with indifference, which was fine. Drew needed accurate information, he didn't want the blowfish to come over all helpful if all they were doing was telling fish stories. "There's information missing on your charge sheets. I want to go over them with you again."

"I want a brief," the big one said. Evidentially he was the designated spokesfish for the group. "We all want a brief."

Drew held a form, with an scrawling mark on the bottom, in front of the bars. "You waived your rights last night. Now let's get through this, and I'll have a nice pot of seaweed tea sent down. How's that sound?"

Given that seaweed tea was a known restorative for most things that ailed Blowfish, the bribe was met with a general burble of approval.

"What do you want to know?" the lead blowfish said. He sounded somewhat less surly, which was a good sign.

Drew worked through the basic information, quickly checking boxes, and filling in contact information. Finally he got to the bit he was really interested in.

"What do you know about the 456?"

The blank stare was no surprise. Drew tried some of the 456's other known aliases. "The Tos? The Wendinii? The … hang on, this ones a bit tricky – " He paused long enough to flex his tongue, because he wasn't good with click languages. "The Naa' taa' bast' atrali." More blank looks. "Do you know anything about a race of extortionists that like to threaten the use of biological weapons if they don't get what a planet considers most precious?"

The Blowfish exchanged glances. They burbled a bit in their own language, and their expressions became sceptical. "That's sounds like a fry story," Kalldo, the big blowfish said.

Drew shook his head to indicate he didn't follow. "Sorry?"

"A fry story," Kalldo repeated. "You know, something you tell little fish to give them a scare, and to make them behave."

It did at that, Drew thought. Except it wasn't. Not according to the other informants they had interviewed. When they'd answered questions about the 456, or at least offenders who matched the 456's MO, the respondents had been dead serious.

"So, no one you've heard of then? Knocking around the way you do."

The Blowfish ruffled their gills to indicate they hadn't.

It had been a long shot, but Drew felt a sense of defeat anyway. He gave the prisoners a resigned nod, and told them again he'd send down their breakfast.

* * * 

The arrival of Dr Harper at Turnmill might not have torn a door open between his dimension and theirs, but the fact that his arrival coincided with the current Rift storm, was still highly suspect. Mark tossed a wad of crumpled paper at his computer monitor, venting frustration at their current situation. He'd seen the Rift in an agitated phase before, spitting out bursts of objects, and the occasional person or animal. But that sort of activity was uncommon. He'd always suspected there was a triggering event, but he'd never been able to pinpoint what that trigger was.

Now he had an uncomfortable suspicion about what the event might be.

The first documented Rift storm had occurred during the Abaddon incident. Torchwood's own Rift manipulator had been used to force the corridor through time and space open. The result, according to the report drafted by Toshiko Sato, had been catastrophic. People, some infected with diseases that hadn't been seen for hundreds of years, had been spit out across Cardiff.

He pulled up the hospital records for Donald Green, now suspected of being transdimensionally riftnapped, and then compared them with Rift activity from around the same time frame.

Spike.

Three solid days of increased activity.

Mark felt his heart rate increase as he pulled the record for Bethany Chase, and made the same comparison.

Another spike, although somewhat less severe. Nine events had been spread out over two days, compared to twenty events over three days.

Evidentially, the Rift didn't like it when the walls between dimensions were breached.

Mark glanced up at the plaster ceiling and imagined the sky far above his head. "That makes two of us," he said before bending his hands to his keyboard to consider more possibilities.

* * * 

Jack pulled up a hundred yards from his most current headache, and stared. He yanked off his shades, and then rubbed his eyes, still not completely convinced that they weren't playing tricks on him. He surveyed the car park of Millennium Stadium once more, and said, "I distinctly remember telling Ianto this morning, no more than one crisis at a time."

In the passenger seat next to him, Dev settled the straps of her field medical kit more comfortably on her slender frame. "There's only the soldiers in front of us, sir."

Which was true, but not the point. They still had the 456 to contend with, and they were still woefully short of ways to deal with whatever threats they might have up their sleeves. And now Mark was about ninety percent convinced that the current Rift storm was tied to Owen's arrival from an alternate dimension. But Dev didn't have his overriding concerns.

"And that's plenty for now, thank you very much." Jack glanced at the rest of his team, six agents hastily assembled from the top of the rota, plus Dev. "All right, people, listen up. There's roughly two dozen of them against the seven of us. So let's do this quick and clean, and round them up before they get themselves on their feet. I don't recognise either of these two races, so watch yourselves. Masks on tight. Form a perimeter, and then let them have it. Go!"

The men and women of Torchwood yanked their protective gas masks into position, and then piled out of the van, fanning out to take up containment positions.

The aliens, in the process of dragging themselves to their feet after the battering of their journey through the Rift, reacted defensively. They aimed their weapons with unsteady hands, and fired wildly.

Bursts of pulsed energy arced forth harmlessly. Unless Jack counted the damage to the car park, which he didn't. Though he was barely in range himself, he lobbed a gas canister, filled with a specially designed irritant, into the centre of the mass of soldiers. There was a loud bang, and then a cloud of white smoke bloomed.

The two factions of soldiers were very different looking. One stood about eight feet tall. They had four arms, and brick-red skin. The other faction was shorter, around five feet tall. Their torsos were barrel-shaped, and their heads, bulbous. The skin on their faces was a curious iridescent pink colour, like mother of pearl. 

Tall or wide, red or pink, the gas had less than the desired effect. The bulbous-headed soldiers were completely unfazed. The tall ones rubbed their faces, but it didn't stop them from producing grenades of their own. They began to toss them one-handed even as they continued to fire. 

Jack grimaced and dodged flying concrete. "Sleep bombs!" he shouted. Given that the irritant gas had been a bust, he wondered if the anaesthetic agent would be effective. He didn't want to turn this into a shooting match, but the aliens' response to less lethal means was limiting his options. 

The aliens decided to temporarily put aside their differences. They formed ranks, and began a coordinated attack. A few of them went as far as picking up the grenades Jack and his team had tossed, and throwing them back at their assailants. 

Nothing was working. 

"Fall back!" Jack yelled, scrambling backwards as he pulled his Webley and fired at the soldiers, giving his agents tacit permission to initiate an armed response.

The aliens were tough. Even injured, they kept shooting. Jack reloaded, emptied his revolver, and reloaded again.

Dev tugged on Jack's sleeve. "Reinforcements, sir!" 

Jack took a fast glance. The vans, meant for prisoner transport, had rolled up, and more agents spilled out of them. Ianto was at the forefront of the reinforcements. He was armed with a snub-nosed machine pistol that clashed rather badly with his suit. When he saw a pink soldier aim in their direction, he fired. Jack felt heat scorch his cheek as he dived sideways. When he looked up again, the pink soldier was no longer a threat, and the rest of the alien soldiers had ceased firing. 

"Took you long enough," Jack grumbled. The anaesthetic gas had finally taken effect. Sort of. Many of the soldiers were still standing, but their weapons were down by their sides, and they were weaving on their feet without purpose. Given their delayed reaction to the chemical attack, there was no telling how long they'd be neutralised. Jack jumped to his feet. "Move in and get ready for transport!" 

With crisp efficiency, most of the agents pushed off the ground. They worked quickly, disarming the soldiers and binding their hands behind them, forming them into ranks, and loading them into the modified prisoner transport vans.

Sam Sandoval rose slowly, after the rest of the team was already in motion. She clutching her left arm with her right hand. Dylan McFee and Moss Ember didn't get up at all.

Dev ran to Sam's side. She took a quick look at the other woman's injury, and then gently pushed her back down to the ground. They exchanged a couple of words, and then Dev was on the move again, checking on Moss. Jack reached Dylan the same time Dev did.

He drew a sharp breath through his nose and let it out again as Dev shook her head. She passed her palm over Dylan's eyes to close them, and whispered words Jack knew were a prayer for safe passage, in Greek. "I'm sorry, sir."

"Yeah, me too," Jack replied, softly. "Get Sam patched up, and then we'll get Dylan and Moss home."

Dev gave him an uncertain look, and then she nodded. She jogged back to Sam, dropped to her side, and then began to extract supplies from her pack.

Jack dropped his gaze to the agent at his feet. Dylan hadn't been with them long, no more than six months. But during that time, he'd been both brave and compassionate when faced with the unknown. In life, he'd looked perpetually worried. In death, he still wore an expression of unease, as if he wasn't sure what to expect on the other side.

Jack smiled a sad smile. He knew how that felt. All his deaths, and he still wasn't sure what was beyond the darkness.

He looked away from Dylan and back at the mop up operation. Ianto was behind the wheel of the van, this time, instead of deploying reinforcements, he was assisting Dev with the injured and the dead. Jack watched as Ianto calmly and efficiently unrolled a body bag and eased Moss into it, before positioning a trolley so that they could move his corpse with a modicum of dignity. Then he and Dev got into the van and drove to rejoin Jack. 

When he got out of the van, Ianto's face was placid, but his mask was betrayed by his eyes. His eyes had turned steely grey. 

Ianto was angry.

He was also scared. And with good reason. A scorch mark had destroyed the sleeve of his jacket.

Jack stared for a long moment at the damage. "Are you okay?" 

Ianto shrugged as he looked dismissively at his sleeve. But Ianto had been in the job long enough to know that if he was still standing then what he felt didn't matter. Right now they had a mission to complete. Maybe later, if he had time, he would give in to emotion. "I'm fine. It's nothing that a sticking plaster and a trip to the tailor shop can't repair."

Jack felt a swell of pride that was laced with sorrow. Ianto always managed to epitomise what it was to be Torchwood. He was an example to them all, and especially to its leader, often when he needed the reminder the most. Ianto's determination was the spur Jack needed to lift himself from the pavement. He stood at attention as Ianto pulled the zip on the body bag shut, and then he said, "Come on, Dylan, let's get you home."

* * * 

After watching Jack give instructions for the handling of the dead, Ianto had taken ten minutes for himself, and then he had returned to the conference room. There, he did what he did best, facilitating the movement of people and equipment, smoothing over rough spots when conflicting departments or organisations bumped up against one another, and generally burying himself in work. When the messaging system on his computer chimed, he reached out automatically and answered the request, only glancing at the display after the fact.

"Dr Porter." Ianto looked at the time display on his computer and noted that Felicity was punctual to the minute. "Status update?"

Their chief medical officer was wearing a mask of her own. Outside of work, Felicity Porter was a warm and funny woman with a surprisingly wide range of interests. Her esoteric knowledge and ability to think laterally had helped them out of more than one crisis. But she had spent the formative years of her young adulthood in the army, and her military training had taught her the value of a calm and collected demeanour.

"Our guests are under sedation, and isolated pending further instructions."

Ianto still wasn't happy about the kidnapping of the PM or the Home Secretary, but what was done, was done. He nodded that he understood, and Felicity continued to report.

"Two agents, and one civilian firefighter, were seriously burnt when a power core went critical. UNIT is handling the containment and decontamination operation, and the injured have been taken to UNIT's field hospital for treatment."

Ianto made a mental notation, adding the latest victims to the running total in his head. "Anything else?"

Felicity looked away from the camera. It was the first time, in long while, that Ianto had seen her appear discomfited, and her unease reverberated through the computer screen like a dissonant chord. "Dev Agi was involved in an incident during the recovery of an artefact."

No wonder Felicity seemed upset, Ianto thought. Although the doctor took an interest in all the members of her staff, she had mentored Dev through her transition from police constable to medical technician, and the pair had grown as close as sisters. 

"What sort of an incident?" Ianto fought to keep his own tone neutral. It was seldom a good thing when the word 'incident' was coupled with 'artefact'.

"You need to see. You and the Captain. She's in the medical wing."

Ianto nodded. He glanced at the screen above his head. The trio of dots were a constant reminder that the threat of the 456 still loomed. "I'm on my way."

* * * 

Martha felt no guilt spying for Jack. She had volunteered herself to be his mole at UNIT after hearing rumblings that the multinational military organisation wasn't thrilled that Torchwood was rebuilding. Back then, some of UNIT's generals thought the best sort of inter-agency cooperation was no cooperation at all. More recently, things had improved, but there were still a few holdouts in the old guard, and she still made it a point to keep a sharp eye out for shady dealings.

She wore a white lab coat over her black uniform, and strolled through the corridors of the data collection unit purposefully, as if she had every right to be there, which wasn't strictly true. If she was queried about her intentions, she had a pass made of psychic paper at the ready, a holdover from her days travelling with the Doctor.

The part of the facility, in which she travelled, was lightly populated. She passed a series of glass-walled computer rooms, manned by bored technicians ticking boxes on clipboard-mounted forms. She walked quickly onward to an office marked Data Retrievals. No one took any notice at all as she took a spot at an unoccupied work station, and glanced over at the basket of requests the clerk next to her was processing.

It would have been thrilling to see a file marked 'Everything UNIT has on the 456', but life seldom worked that way, at least not for her. Resolutely, Martha used a computer access code she had stolen earlier in the day, and typed in her own query, praying that there wasn't an additional layer of security protecting the information she wanted.

Dots blinked on the computer's monitor. Martha felt herself begin to perspire. It seemed as if it was taking an unusually long time for the request to be processed. She considered cancelling the query, but then she looked around the room and saw that the other researchers were tapping their pencils as they reviewed paperwork, stretched, or were otherwise engaged in the sort of time-killing acts one did when a computer system was crawling. She relaxed a fraction, and then breathed a sigh of relief when text finally began to fill the screen.

Reading swiftly, Martha suppressed a gasp of outrage. With trembling fingers, she downloaded the case history and its accompanying files to a memory stick, and then made a hasty exit.

* * * 

A lot of strange artefacts had come through the Rift over the years: machines that played back memories, Dogon Third Eyes that offered a radically different perspective on life, boxes that plunged the users into strange new worlds, like video games, only much more real.

But a de-ageing ray was the sort of outrageous nonsense that senior agents used to tease new recruits. It was a humorous way to encourage them to be careful in the field. Winding up newbies with stories of fictional agents who had been zapped, and turned into children, was a time-honoured bit of fun.

It had never actually happened.

At least not until now.

To say that she was annoyed that such a device actually existed, and that she was its first casualty, was a minor understatement. The truth was, Dev was beyond angry. In a moment of fatigue-driven carelessness, she had tripped over her own feet and ended up directly in the path of the device's beam. She was slightly less angry with Ben Eagle. He was a rookie, still in training, and the recovery mission was one of his first. 

Lesson learnt. The hard way. Now he was beside himself with remorse, and Dev looked like a kid.

"I'm fine," Dev said automatically as the captain and Ianto entered the medical bay. She had been saying she was all right ever since she picked herself up off the tarmac in the shopping centre car park. She kept saying it, mostly to convince herself, it was true. The transformation was superficial. She might be looking at her ten year old self in the mirror, but on the inside, nothing had changed.

Captain Harkness crossed his arms over his chest and pulled a deeply sceptical face. Ianto looked like he had a massive tension headache, on top of a case of bone-deep fatigue. Neither man seemed willing to take her at her word.

Ianto turned to Felicity. "And what does Dr Porter say?"

Felicity handed the captain a medical report, and then summarised it. "Dr Porter says that mentally, Agent Agi appears to be unimpaired. Her memory and cognitive skills matched the numbers achieved during her last fitness exam. Physically... well you can see for yourself. Bone density scans, and other tests, suggest that she has reverted to approximately ten years of age."

"Are the effects reversible?" Jack asked.

"Don't be daft," Dev said sharply. "Of course they are. The bloody thing has a knob on it, doesn't it?" She immediately dipped her head to the floor. "Sorry, sir. I didn't mean to be impertinent."

"Dev," Felicity said in the calm and soothing tone she normally reserved for patients that were especially poorly. "You've been working back to back shifts. You're exhausted. Go find a bed in the noncritical ward, and get some sleep. I'll run that device through the computer diagnostics myself, and once the controls are translated, we'll run some tests."

She would have been due to go off shift and take four hours downtime anyway. Grudgingly, Dev nodded her willingness to be sidelined. She started to retreat, doing the walk of shame to the back of the medical wing, when Dr Harper entered.

He stared at her, obviously surprised to see a child. "Recruiting them kind of young, aren't you, Captain?"

Dev knew, if she was smart, she'd keep her mouth shut and make the exit she'd just been given permission to make. But she hadn't liked being dismissed by adults when she was a child, and it seemed she still resented it. "It's me, sir. Dev Agi?" At Dr Harper's disbelieving look she added, "Honestly, I promise. We had breakfast this morning." Breakfast seemed a very long time ago, and at the mention of a meal, Dev realised she was starving.

Dr Harper looked at her much more closely. He stalked up to her and examined her like a bug under a microscope, circling round until they were eye to eye once more.

"You know, at my Torchwood, this sort of thing only used to happen on slow days."

"People are tired," Felicity said. "Mistakes get made." She gave the captain a significant look.

For a long few seconds, he appeared resigned and bitter. Dev knew what Felicity was saying. There'd already been deaths. There'd already been injuries that, on better days, they might have avoided. The silent communication said it was going to get worse, before it got better, and they had all better buckle up for a bumpy ride.

A wave of guilt came close to overwhelming her. Dev dipped her head quickly, and brushed at her eyes. She was going to cry. She knew it. What a stellar impression she was making on their new doctor, she thought bitterly. 

Felicity strode over to the table and picked up the containment box holding the de-ageing gun. "Do you know this device?"

Dr Harper broke out in a fond smile as he crossed the room to stand next to Felicity. "Do I know this device." He chuckled. "Good times, this. One night, not long after he was hired, Andy was playing silly buggers. He thought it was a toy, and Tosh got caught in the beam. Shrank her right down to snack-size." He looked at his audience, and there was amusement dancing in his eyes. "She was none too pleased, let me tell you."

"So what happened?" Ianto asked. He'd been standing so quietly, he'd nearly faded into the background. Dev was startled by the sound of his voice.

"Jack twiddled this little raised thing here – " He pointed at a spot on the gun. "And Tosh was good as new." He scrunched his eyes up, and tilted his head, as if he was reappraising his last statement. "Well, not quite. It seems, on humans, at least, the cognitive functions eventually catch up with the de-aged body. Before we figured out how that gadget worked, Tosh lost roughly a year's worth of knowledge. She had to relearn a computer language she'd recently mastered, and a lot of other bits and pieces."

Hope surged over her despair. Dev practically leapt across the room and grabbed Dr Harper by the sleeve of his lab coat. "So you can fix me!"

He glanced over at the captain, seeking his approval. The captain, in turn, silently conferred with Felicity, who after a few moments, grudgingly nodded. "I don't see that we have a choice," she said.

"Right. Did you do an advanced diagnostic scan?"

The captain had passed the readout to Ianto. Ianto held it up, and Dr Harper snatched it out from between his fingers. He studied the results for what seemed like an age, but was probably only half a minute. Dev couldn't contain her impatience. She bounced nervously on her toes as he handed the report back to Ianto, and with a tip of his head, indicated that they should put the de-ageing device, in its carrier box, on the instrument tray.

Dr Harper made a small adjustment to the controls. And then another. He glanced up at Dev and cocked his head, and then made a third adjustment. Finally, he nodded at the device and said, "There. That should do it." He lifted the gun. "I'd suggest you all stand well away, unless you want to start cashing your pension checks."

Dev was left alone. She shut her eyes, and waited.

"This may sting a bit," Dr Harper said. 

Dev screamed in agony as the growth cycle of her body was accelerated, and every cell in her body was replaced thousands of times. She collapsed to the floor, clutching her knees against her chest. And then she passed out entirely.

* * *

Owen dropped to his knees next to a restored Dev Agi. He checked her pulse, and lifted an eyelid, and then he jerked his head towards an exam table to indicate that she was all right to move.

Jack scooped Dev up into his arms and deposited her gently on the exam table.

"That last bit will have taken a lot out of her," Owen said to Felicity. "Let her sleep it off, and she should be back to her old self, more or less, when she wakes."

"More or less?" Ianto asked.

Owen shrugged. "She may have to relearn a thing or two, and her memories of the last few months might be a little fuzzy. We didn't spend a lot of time exploring the gun's inner works after Tosh's accident. There was a shortage of willing test subjects."

"Lock that thing up," Jack said. "We don't want any more accidents. Not today."

He seemed to remember that Owen was supposed to be somewhere else. "Did you have something to report?"

Owen nodded. "I did, actually. There's something you should see in my lab."

Jack exchanged looks with Ianto. The silent communication seemed to say, 'What now?' Ianto jerked his head towards the isolation area, and then he lifted the chain of his pocket watch. The implication was pretty clear. There was some other sort of time sensitive project on the boil. Jack blew out a breath and pushed a hand through his fringe. He pressed his lips together as Ianto folded his arms over his chest.

It was a fascinating display, and Owen could have watched it for hours. The pair in pantomime were a hell of a lot more interesting than most people when they were having a full blown barney. But while fun was fun, there was a crisis on. Or so he'd been led to believe.

"Whenever you're ready," he prompted after another round of watch pointing and glares.

"Fine." Jack huffed out a breath. "Dr Porter, wake up our guests. As soon as we're done down in the lab, I need to have a chat."

Owen glanced at his monitor, which was still blinking green at ten second intervals, and then he walked out of the medical bay. He had no idea what else was going on, and frankly he wasn't entirely sure that he cared. A moment later, the clump of boots, and the quiet shuffle of leather over concrete, let him know that the other two men were following.

The tension level in the Hub had escalated as the day had progressed. Owen saw it in the taut postures and drawn faces of the men and women they passed as they descended from the medical bay to the research levels. Still, it was clear that they were doing their best to keep their chins up. They smiled grim and determined smiles as they greeted their captain and their second-in-command.

Jack played his part of Brave Captain to the hilt. He squeezed shoulders, slapped backs, and offered words of encouragement as he bared his teeth in his most carefree grin. Owen had a flashback to a documentary he'd once seen about WWI. Life in the trenches was mud, rats, lice, and more mud, interspersed with brutal and horrific death, and yet, during the re-enactment portion of the film, the officers responsible with sending the men over the top had been portrayed acting as Jack was now. As if the charge over the top into No Man's Land would be a jolly day out in the sunshine. They lied with straight faces, and their men nodded and smiled, as if they believed the lies, because if they didn't, they'd swallow their own guns wholesale, killing themselves cleanly, before the Germans had a chance to cut them down with machine guns, or dissolve their lungs with gas.

During each impromptu pep talk, Ianto was less vibrant, but no less reassuring. _What can I do?_ seemed to be his mantra. He said it no less than ten times to the scientists and technicians they passed, backing up Jack's promises that they would make it through the current crisis by providing the resources they needed to accomplish the impossible.

As they reached the threshold of his laboratory, Owen had to grudgingly admit to himself that the pair were quite a team. They were facing planetary invasion, by an enemy that had the potential to make the WWI Germans look like small-time street thugs, and their shells filled with mustard gas, no worse than a smoggy day. The 456 were spacefarers that dealt in plague and pestilence. Earth didn't have the kind of planetary defences to protect themselves from that kind of an enemy. Not in his world, and evidentially, not in this one either.

Not unless they pulled off a miracle.

Owen smiled a small and bitter smile. Maybe, even though he was meant to be a dead man, he had a contribution to make after all.

* * *

Ianto was simmering. He was doing a good job of hiding it. It certainly wasn't obvious to any of their team as they stopped to collect status reports, and offer words of encouragement, but Jack could tell.

Ianto had never been completely on board with kidnapping the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary, and even though it had been his idea all along, Jack understood. Kidnapping was heavy-handed and inelegant, and Ianto preferred a more subtle approach, whenever it was possible. But Ianto, although he'd been through a lot, hadn't lived through the nightmare of the 456's first visit. He hadn't been there when a handful of government ministers willingly surrendered orphan children, whose lives they considered disposable when measured against the the cost of a worldwide pandemic.

Jack had decided early on he wasn't going to let that happen again. With the PM and the HS in his pocket, so to speak, he could control the government's actions, or so he hoped. If they were away from the people who looked at life as a commodity, to be bought and sold, then maybe they might be made to see reason. Maybe they might be made to fight, instead of willingly submitting to the 456's demands.

In his head, Jack had imagined bringing the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary to Cardiff. There, they would see that even though Torchwood One had fallen, the organisation remaining was still strong enough, and capable enough, to protect the planet from whatever the 456 threatened them with. The ministers would join Torchwood in making a stand. And maybe then, when the 456 had been successfully defeated, he could completely forgive himself for his own act of complicit indifference.

If only the 456 had waited a little longer.

What they needed was time.

What they needed was more information.

What they needed was a plan.

They'd built up resources. They had a small fleet of spaceworthy ships, although not enough pilots to fly them. They had a cache of formidable weapons, scavenged from the Rift. They were working on a planetary defence net in cooperation with UNIT, but it was years away from completion.

"Ta da!"

Jack blinked. He hadn't realise it, but during the last bit of the trip to Owen's laboratory, he'd slipped inside his head, traversing the corridors on autopilot. He blinked again as he looked around the lab and saw that Owen was pointing to the open cloning pod. 

Jack strode forward and looked down into the face of Dr Owen Harper.

"Given that you lot are in a bit of a push for results, I cut a few corners."

Owen, the real Owen, picked up a medical scanner and ran it over the body of his clone. He pressed his lips together and then nodded as if satisfied. "Stable. At least it will be for the next twelve hours, give or take a bit."

"And then what happens?" Ianto asked.

"I wouldn't stand too close," Owen replied. "It's not a real clone, more of a replicate made from a bioactive polymer. It can walk. It can talk. It can perform reasonably complex functions, but when its runtime ends... splat. Pile of goo. Very messy."

"How does it work?" Jack asked. There was potential here, if they could correctly harness it. He envisioned an army of Iantos, and knew with that kind of organisation on their side, victory was practically assured.

Owen shrugged. "Imagine a photocopy machine set on _human_ but filled with that cheap ink they used in cash registers."

Jack was tired, and he was having trouble wrapping his head around Owen's analogy. "You mean if you stuff the receipt in a drawer, a week later the paper will be blank?"

Owen nodded. "Something like that, yes. Only these don't fade. They just fall apart."

"And how long does it take to make a copy?"

"Not long," Owen replied.

"What are you thinking?" Ianto asked.

They could multiply every agent, and for a short time have a highly trained army. They could clone the science teams, exponentially increasing the size of their think tank, and then clone all their technicians, providing enough hands to build the resultant weapons. His pilot shortage could be solved. Jack found himself getting dizzy from the possibilities.

"I'm not sure yet," Jack replied. "But I want the rest of these things brought up from storage on the double." He put his hand on Owen's shoulder. "Get them fixed. Like this. Short term mode. I don't know how yet, but I think they're going to come in handy."

* * * 

Keeping cool in a crisis was a skill Martha had learnt aboard the TARDIS and honed to perfection in the subsequent years afterwards. She could blank her face to a stone mask, or she could just assume an air of detachment. A preoccupied look suited her needs, and so she put it on like a disguise, and then strolled, with a careful lack of purpose, out of UNIT headquarters. She got into her car, pulled out of the compound, and drove with precision until she was five miles away. Only then did her hands start to tremble against the steering wheel. Ten miles further down the road, she pulled off into a lay-by, cut off the engine, and dialled Ianto.

"I'm sending you a file. You need to read it now." She disconnected the call, attached a USB cable to the memory stick containing the stolen files on the 456, and then connected the other end of the cable to her mobile. A few clicks later, the file was transmitted, and Martha breathed a sigh of relief.

She pointed her car towards the nearest railway station, parked in the long term lot, boarded a fast train for Cardiff, and hoped she could be of some use once she got there.

* * * 

Burning Hollow was spoils of war. It was a monument to raw courage, and a reminder that a handful of human beings could, if given the right incentives, defeat a much more powerful enemy, even if the odds were stacked woefully against them.

It was also a getaway retreat for Torchwood employees; a place where they could take downtime when they needed it, or engage in their most highbrow research, stopping from time to time to smell the roses in its carefully manicured gardens, as they puzzled out complex problems.

The stately home had once been owned by the heir to a coal mining fortune, who was also a Y2K enthusiast. He had kitted out the estate with all the survivalist mod cons. Storage facilities for food, clothing, and medical supplies. A water reclamation and sewage treatment facility. To keep his fortress secure, he'd reinforced the fencing, and added extra security measures to keep out the ravening hordes, who were anticipated when their own supplies were exhausted. 

Y2K had been a bust, but the owner of the estate, Barrington Rhys-Mitchell, hadn't let that stop him from finding a new cause. He'd allied himself with a group that believed that a race of alien slavers could improve the human condition. Fortunately, for everyone else on the planet, Torchwood had been there to say otherwise. And now they were being called upon to do it again.

Andy reflected on the estate's history as the skeleton crew of pilots and technicians assembled in the dining hall. There weren't many of them, only a handful. On most days, when they weren't tinkering with airplanes and spacecraft hauled to the estate by salvage specialists, they were spread across the property doing routine maintenance. A stately home the size of Burning Hollow needed constant care and upkeep.

He looked at the set and determined faces of the men and women. It was clear that word had spread ahead of his arrival. Andy clapped his hands together to call the briefing to order.

"You've probably already heard that we've got a situation. Details are a bit thin on the ground right now, but what we do know is; there are aliens on their way, and they're not friendly."

A murmur rolled through the room. A general muttering agreement of 'Well isn't that just too bad... for the aliens.'

"The upshot is, lads," Andy said when the room had settled down. "we've got a choice. We can wait for the 456 to come to the Earth, or we can go up and meet them in space."

There was another collective murmur. As good as they were at their jobs, the crew of Burning Hollow knew they were more like the Rebel Alliance than the Imperial Fleet. Their hearts were in the right place, but they were resource poor. 

"So all hands to the hangars. We've got to get as many of those ships out there ready to fly as we can. I want pre-flight checks run on the working craft, and a readiness assessment ASAP of everything else. We'll prioritise from there."

Andy knew he needed to say something inspiring. He had rehearsed ideas on the ride out, discarding most of them as trite. He wished he could come up with something that didn't sound hackneyed, but he wasn't really one for speeches. He just spoke from his gut, and from his heart, and left the oration for those like the boss, who had a gift for drama. "The world needs us, lads," he said at last. "Let's not let them down."

* * * 

Ianto's mobile pinged, indicating that the file Martha was sending him had arrived. He returned to the command centre in the conference room, leaving Jack to contend with the PM and Home Secretary, and transferred the file to his workstation.

He scanned file headers, then opened the first one and began to read. It was a summation of the rest of the data: history, personnel involved, a situation report. As he read, Ianto looked for information about Torchwood's involvement, and found that a high level command decision had been made to exclude the organisation from all but a peripheral role. When he saw Jack's name, and an unexpurgated copy of his personnel file, Ianto slowed down and read more carefully.

Through long nights of careful and sensitive questioning, Ianto knew quite a lot about Jack's personal history. He knew that during the post-war years, Torchwood had used Jack as a courier, often during top secret missions. Many of those missions had been of a questionable moral or ethical nature, and all of them had been highly dangerous. Jack had confessed to being killed many times, and yet he'd gone back for more.

There was a division in government thought about extraterrestrials. The official line was that the United Kingdom would go down fighting against an alien invasion. But there were others, highly placed government ministers and advisers, who felt the best way to deal with an incursion was to smooth its progress through concessions. Their beliefs were similar to those held by Neville Chamberlain and his allies, during the ramp up to World War Two. They believed that appeasement, rather than conflict, was the better path to continued survival. 

At the time of the 456's first contact, Pro-Earth ministers hadn't yet cleaned house of the pro-appeasement faction, although they were on the verge of doing so. The quislings knew their days were numbered, and they were in a defensive mode. They had argued persuasively enough that they were allowed to broker a deal with the 456 as a test case.

Ianto stared numbly at the computer screen, and then he read the terms of the agreement the quisling ministers had drafted with the 456 a second time. 

_In return for a vaccine against a mutated strain of the Spanish Flu virus, the 456 will receive twelve children in good physical and mental health, under thirteen years of age, and their escort, Captain Jack Harkness._

The 456 were meant to take twelve children, and Jack.

Eleven children had been sacrificed that night. One child had escaped, and despite an extensive search, he had never been located again. 

Jack, for reasons known only to the 456, had been left behind. 

And the people who had engineered the deal, had walked away, unscathed.

Stunned, Ianto opened the next file, and continued to read.

* * * 

Ianto was sitting at the conference room table, looking anything but relaxed. His attention was occupied by his computer screen. He was scribbling notes onto a pad as he read.

Jack reached a fast decision. He had amused himself earlier with the notion of an army of Iantos, but watching him work, obviously stretched to the limit as he multi-tasked, put a whole new spin on his fantasy.

He put his hand on Ianto's shoulder and gave it a squeeze. Ianto looked up, and gave him a tired smile in return. Jack frowned back when he saw the shadows gathered around Ianto's eyes. "Are you okay?"

Ianto pointed at the computer monitor. "Martha sent UNIT's file on the original 456 incident. It's been difficult reading."

Given how veiled government documents could be, coded in their own sort of bureaucratic doublespeak, and then carefully composed in such a way to avoid any sort of emotive language, Jack could well imagine how cold and detached the report concerning the event had been.

"Anything useful?"

Ianto nodded, guardedly, as if he wasn't sure. "Maybe. I've sent technical briefs to the Science Section for analysis. I'm hoping they'll be able to tell us something."

"Good." Jack drew a breath. He knew what he was about to say wasn't going to be met with enthusiasm. "Now I want you to put that aside."

"Why?" Ianto asked. "What do you need me to do?"

"You need some help," Jack replied, hoping that Ianto would see things his way. "And I know just the person for the job." He pointed at Ianto's chest, and then he gave his shoulder another squeeze.

Surprisingly, Ianto nodded back at him. "I was hoping you might feel that way."

Jack gave Ianto a side-eyed look. "Why?"

Ianto blew out a breath. He looked guilty. "Because after I left the lab, I doubled back. Owen is copying me now. I've left instructions for the other me to assist Owen with the modifications of the cloning pods."

Trust Ianto to anticipate everything. "How many moves ahead of me are you, anyway?" Jack asked. He wasn't angry. If anything he was amused.

Ianto shrugged. "It just seemed the most expedient course of action. There's so much to do. We need to be in so many places at once. And now we can be."

There didn't seem to be much more to say. Ianto wasn't wrong. And speaking of the need to be in multiple places simultaneously, as much as he wanted to continue the quiet conversation, the ministers were waiting.

"Wish me luck," Jack said. "It's time I sat down with the government."

Ianto put down his pen. He reached up and pressed his fingers against Jack's wrist for the briefest of moments, and then he withdrew his hand. "Luck."

The discreet press of Ianto's fingers against Jack's skin made Jack's heart swell in his chest. So much confidence and trust had been conveyed in such a simple act. It gave Jack the boost he needed for his next difficult task.

He stepped away from Ianto's side, and made a purposeful exit, striding back to the medical wing as if he hadn't a care in the world. When he arrived, Stuart was standing outside the door of the small office the medical staff used for private consultations. He straightened when he saw Jack, and dipped his head respectfully. "Sir. Your guests are ready to see you."

"Did they give you any trouble?" Jack asked.

For a moment Stuart seemed almost impish as he smothered an amused smile. "No bother, sir. Collected the PM and the Home Secretary from Number 10, right out from under the noses of their watchers."

There was a story there, one Jack would have been very interested to hear the former Glasgow Murder Squad detective constable relate, had he more time. "I look forward to hearing all about it." Jack smiled and winked, and then he smoothed out his face to something more decorous as Stuart knocked on the door.

Stuart's colleague Bess was on the other side. She was Arts and Antique's senior strategist, and no doubt it had been her careful planning that had led to the successful extraction of the two government officials. She flashed a brilliant smile in greeting. "Captain. Good to see you."

"The feeling is mutual, Agent Rahman." He lifted his chin to indicate the people behind them. "Good work as always."

Bess nodded. "Thank you, sir," she said, with an implied salute, and then she was gone, leaving Jack alone with his guests.

There was a time and a place for ethical behaviour, but a planetary crisis, with more variables than constants, wasn't one of them. At least not in Jack's book. Ordering the kidnapping of key government figures had just been his opening gambit. He'd also instructed Felicity, once the pair had come out of heavy sedation, to drug them with a cocktail of chemicals. Scopalomine was one component, but there were several others as well, some sourced from off planet. A small dose loosened the subject's tongue, and made it easy to compel them to tell the truth. A larger dose acted like Retcon, without the memory loss. It made the subject malleable and open to suggestion.

In government circles, truth was subjective. Given his past history with ministerial types, it was important for Jack to know exactly where he stood, and whether those in power would back his play.

"Prime Minister. Mr Secretary. I apologise for the less than conventional way you've been brought to Torchwood, but I assure you both, it was necessary."

In front of the cameras, Prime Minister Stockton was a man of the people. In private, he was a shark, eating lesser ministers for breakfast, if they displeased him. The shark was present in his eyes as he regarded Jack with a gimlet gaze. "You've got a great deal of explaining to do, Captain Harkness."

Jack threaded a thumb through his brace. "Don't I know it, sir," he replied affably.

The Home Secretary nodded along, but then being agreeable was what Brian Moseby did best. He was in charge of keeping the peace between the factions of a fractious coalition government, as well being responsible for national security. "Why are we here?"

That, was as good a starting off point as any, Jack thought. "It's like this, gentlemen – " 

To his captive audience, Jack laid his cards on the table. He gauged their responses, and factored their answers into his bigger game plan. When he was finished, he knocked on the door and had a quiet word with Bess and Stuart, instructing them to return the pair to Downing Street.


	4. Chapter 4

* * * 

The choice between being at UNIT HQ listening to a bunch of generals and their advisers haggling over strategy, or being out in the field doing some actual good, was no choice at all. Martha knew there were UNIT brigades assigned to Cardiff, and she could have reported to one of them, but she didn't. She headed straight for Mermaid Quay and Torchwood because, in her heart, she knew that was where she could do the most good.

When she let herself into the nondescript office that served as its public face, there was a towheaded agent, with a cast on his right arm, staffing the front desk. When he lifted his head from his computer terminal and smiled politely, he revealed a pair of blackened eyes under his wire-framed glasses, and a bruised left cheek that was partially covered by a sticking plaster.

Martha smiled back at him as she handed over her identification, but couldn't help commenting, "You've been through the wars."

"It's a rough time all around, ma'am," he replied, and then buzzed her through.

The cubicles and offices that filled the workspace were mostly empty. The few agents who remained were busy filling in reports and fielding telephone calls. It appeared that Torchwood was mired in more than one crisis.

When Martha reached the door that led to the main Hub, Ianto was waiting to escort her. He looked surprisingly fresh, considering the state of affairs, and he offered her a genuinely delighted smile.

"We weren't expecting you, but you're very welcome all the same." He pressed her hand between his, as close to a hug as he might offer under professional circumstances, and he then indicated that she should come through. "You're just in time for a situation briefing."

Martha had made the occasional visit to Torchwood since its phoenix-like rise. She recognised some, but not all of the faces gathered round the conference table, and waved discreet greetings to her medical colleague Felicity Porter, and to technical specialist Mark Landers, before pulling out a chair so she could take a place at the table next to –

"Ianto?" Martha swivelled her neck and looked up at the man standing next to her, and then back at the one already seated next to Jack. "Oh. My. God," she said softly.

The Ianto that had escorted her smiled at her bemusement. "I should have explained on the way down."

"Sorry I'm late."

Martha boggled at the new arrival. "Owen? Owen Harper?"

Feeling decidedly faint, Martha didn't protest when one of the Iantos pressed her down into the chair and Jack began to rub her back.

"Don't worry, Martha Jones," Jack said. "You're not losing your mind. That really is Owen, well, _an_ Owen. And there are two Iantos. Also two Marks, and a couple of Felicitys. It's been that kind of a week."

There had been an incident with alien technology that had resulted in a clone of Andy Davidson. Martha had swapped emails with both Felicity and Ianto about it at the time. But Ianto said they'd disabled the tube as a safety measure. And Felicity had said the cloning process took weeks, not days, to complete. As for Owen – "I don't understand."

Jack held Martha steady as she sat upright and didn't let go until he was sure she wasn't going to faint. "It's like this. That Owen is from an alternate dimension. His transportation caused a Rift storm. So even before the 456 decided to come to town, we were pushed to the limit. As it turns out, cloning tubes have also made their way into Owen's dimension, so he had some experience with them." 

"So you cloned extra staff," Martha said, as she struggled to wrap her head around Jack's recitation of recent events. "But I thought the clones took weeks to grow."

Jack nodded. "Normally, yes, that's true. But it turns out the pods also have a quick cook mode, where they can make temporary models."

"Quick cook," Martha mouthed. And then she thought, Why not? She had seen some pretty unusual things during her travels with the Doctor. In some contexts, disposable clones probably made perfect sense. "We need to have a long catch up when this is done, Jack."

Jack gave her a warm smile. "You can count on it. But right now, we've got a lot of miles to go."

Martha answered Jack's smile with a look of mock-sternness. "Then we better getting cracking, Captain."

Jack rapped his knuckles against the table, calling the room to order. He glanced up at the display screen split between a map of the solar system and a map of the greater Cardiff area. Both had illuminated dots on them. The map of Cardiff had two. The map of the solar system had three, positioned so they were just on the far side of Mars.

"Some of you know Dr Martha Jones," Jack said as the room quieted down. "If you don't, Martha's an old friend, so don't worry about the UNIT uniform. She's a medical doctor with experience in xenology. More importantly, this isn't her first planetary crisis. Thank you for coming, Dr Jones. Your help is appreciated."

He glanced up at the central screen again and blew out a breath as one of the dots disappeared off the Cardiff map. "Drew. Give us a status update on the local situation."

"The Rift seems to be settling." There was a low murmur of 'finally' and 'Thank God' from around the conference table. "Since the crisis began we've taken six, clearly time-displaced but healthy, persons to Flat Holm Island for processing. We've got a dozen more stashed at local hospitals and UNIT facilities under strict isolation, with field agents or friendly constables keeping an eye on them. There have been two cases of plague, two with measles. The rest have conditions we can't put names to, yet. UNIT is temporarily housing those soldiers that landed at the stadium, since our cells are full of agitated weevils and hungover Blowfish. They've also assisted with the containment of multiple dangerous pieces of technology, although we've made a point to keep anything portable, that wasn't spewing radiation, out of their hands."

Martha looked around the table with a new appreciation for the men and women under Jack's command. No wonder they looked so exhausted.

"Has anything been identified that we can use with our other situation?" Jack asked the Ianto at his side.

He looked across the table at the other Ianto who, Martha noticed, was wearing a silver cuff with a digital readout around his wrist.

"Archivists and technicians are working as fast as they can to catalogue the items. We've confirmed a couple of handheld pulse guns and the de-ageing ray. Everything else is still unidentified."

"Keep at it," Jack said.

Ianto II nodded and then with an incline of his head, he left the room.

"Mark?"

"The 456 are now in communications range. We're broadcasting the warning that the Earth is under the protection of the Shadow Proclamation, and that hostile acts will be dealt with by the Judoon. So far there's been no indication that the message is being received. The 456 are still on their original course."

Jack didn't seem surprised. Martha wasn't either. She'd yet to meet a hostile alien who was put off by a stern warning.

"What's the status of the defence grid?"

The screen split again, and then the new screen enlarged. The third view showed the Earth ringed by tiny dots. Clusters of them were yellow, but most were black. "The yellow dots are live," Mark said. "We can generate a repulsion field in those sectors, but it's not enough to make a difference. Another six months and it's possible, working hand in glove with UNIT, that we could have had the screen online. I'm sorry, boss."

Jack shook his head to indicate he didn't hold his technical team at fault. "I'm amazed you were able to sneak as many of those field generators onto commercial satellites as you have, Mark. You must have called in a lot of favours. And who knows? They might end up being useful yet."

"Was there anything helpful in the documents I sent you?" Martha asked. "Anything you could exploit?"

Jack glanced round the table at the division heads and received a series of head shakes in return.

"If only they'd made actual contact, instead of just making threats from space," Felicity said. "Then we might have a biological profile."

Ianto touched a couple of buttons. "Andy, status at Burning Hollow?"

"We've got twelve short range, fighter class ships, and three cargo shuttles ready to go up on demand. We've retrofitted eight more fighters, with human compatible control systems, but we lack the pilots to fly them. Given a few more hours, we could up that to twelve ships, but that still doesn't help us with the pilot shortage. There's also the robot control prototype. Although it's gone through its initial testing phase with flying colours, a production unit is still weeks away from completion."

Something Martha had read in the summation of the first 456 contact resonated with the talk of ships.

"What, Martha Jones," Jack said. "What are you thinking?"

It was a random thought, triggered by an email exchange with Ianto. 'Stand and deliver' like pirates or highwaymen, she'd written when the 456's modus operandi had been explained to her. But it was clear that the people around her were desperate for anything they could get their hands on, so maybe even a random thought would be useful. "It's easy to talk tough when no one knows anything about you."

She glanced around the table as she tried to explain. "I mean, look at the level of extraterrestrial experience we had back when the 456 first made contact! We were babies, taking our first steps out into the bigger galaxy. The 456 pulled a few impressive parlour tricks, and I'll bet it was scary."

"The Soviets and the Americans pointed warheads at them," Ianto interjected. "It was only our leaders who thought it was easier to go along."

"They were afraid of another war," Martha countered. "And who could blame them? It wasn't very long before that we'd muddled our way through six years of WWII. They were tired and afraid."

"I wouldn't have thought you'd have much sympathy for that kind of behaviour, Martha Jones," Jack said.

"I don't countenance it," Martha replied as she met Jack's curious gaze. "But in retrospect, I can understand where they were coming from." Once again she examined the careworn faces of the men and women who stood between Earth and the 456. It was obvious they needed a morale boost. "The point is, things are different now. We have a better understanding. We know that the Universe isn't all that different from our own planet. It's full of bullies and fast buck artists. And if you stand up to them, toe to toe, then more often than not, they will back down." She shrugged. "And even if they don't, there will always be a few of us willing to take the fight to them."

"So what are you saying?" Jack was looking at her as if he was seeing her again for the first time.

Martha caught her breath, and gathered her scattered thoughts, trying to pull them together into something cohesive. "According to that report I read, the 456 made their demand from space by radio, but they took the children by transmat beam. Why can't you use their beam to get on board their ship?"

"They control it, for starters," Jack said. "We'd have to smuggle someone on board first to get control of the machinery."

"They're very good at pressing their advantage," Ianto said. "On planets where they were initially resisted, they used some kind of psychic amplifier, forcing a segment of the population to act like puppets."

"Too bad they didn't try that here," Mark said.

"Why do you say that?" Jack asked.

Mark sketched on the tablet in front of him and then tapped the device's controls. A diagram appeared on the screen, replacing that of the location of the last remaining field team.

It depicted a beam directed at the Earth, and a second beam directed back at a flying saucer.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, doctors, but too much psychic energy reacts like too much of any other kind of energy." He sketched some more, and tendrils of smoke, and jagged tongues of flames appeared to be spilling out of the cartoon spaceship.

"Melting their brains would certainly cause a distraction," Ianto remarked dryly. "They'd be too busy dying to pay any attention to a boarding party."

"It's risky," Mark said. The views on the monitor changed again. The sketch of the flying saucer was replaced by a grainy shot of three large and ominous looking spaceships. "Even with every fighter piloted we'd be seriously outgunned."

"UNIT could help," Martha said. "They don't talk about it, but they've confiscated their fair share of extraterrestrial craft."

Jack pulled a face. Martha understood. Jack had little love for UNIT. Admitting that he needed even more of their help was going to cost him. "Could we get their ships without their pilots?"

Martha frowned. It would mean pulling some serious strings. Maybe even dropping the Doctor's name in some high level ears. "Maybe," she said hesitantly. "But why? Andy just said you haven't enough pilots to fly your own ships."

Jack ignored the obvious and nodded decisively, caught up in his thoughts. "Do it. Ianto, put cloning pods on a flatbed and get them out to Burning Hollow. I want the rest of our ships manned. Owen, you go with them to supervise operations. Mark. I don't care how you do it, but work your magic and get that psychic field generator operational. Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have a plan."

"Boss, I don't think the 456 are going to cooperate," Mark said as his hands flew over the keyboard in front of him.

On screen, one ship had broken out of the triangle formation. It had accelerated ahead of the others, and was headed straight for Earth.

"Damn it!" Jack swore vehemently, and it was clear that the others agreed with his sentiment. "Andy, I want fighters in the air. Now. Intercept course."

"Boss." Behind Andy's crisp reply came the sound of a loudspeaker calling all hands to action, and then the signal abruptly cut out.

"The lead 456 is deploying additional craft," Mark announced. "Unless the 456 are tiny, those are drones."

"Purpose?" Jack asked.

"Components of a field generator to enhance their psychic projection?" Ianto shrugged. "Unless they've got giant throbbing brains, they've got to have some sort of machine to boost their signal." He slapped the palm of his right hand against his forehead, as if he'd abruptly remembered something, and couldn't believe he'd been so forgetful, and then he pulled his headset into place and began a terse conversation.

Mark shook his head to indicate he disagreed with Ianto's hypothesis. "That seems like an inefficient way to operate."

"You said they were bio-terrorists," Felicity said. "What if they're seeding pathogenic agents ahead of their arrival?"

That sounded more likely. The convenient outbreak of mutated flu had erupted shortly before the arrival of the 456, as had the potential pandemics on the other planets where they had made their demands.

"Whatever they are, we can figure it out later," Jack said. "Mark, relay a message to mission control. Have our crates blow those things up before they hit Earth's atmosphere." He rounded on Martha. "With me. We're gonna need all hands on deck. We need air support from UNIT, and we need it now."

* * * 

Ianto pulled aside Mark and Felicity as soon as the briefing ended. He outlined his idea, explaining about the interrogation machine down in the archive, that had the unfortunate side effect of blowing off the top of heads if the subject was probed without finesse. "Could the machine be modified in some way and then hooked into the radio transmission system?"

"Do you have schematics?" Mark said.

There were a rudimentary set that Suzie had worked out attached to the file about the machine. Ianto pulled them out of the computer, and the trio huddled over them as they conferred.

Mark traced circuitry with the tip of his finger, learning its inner workings as if studying them by Braille. "If only we knew something about their physiology," Felicity mused. She chuckled darkly. "We could wire them into that VR world we got stuck in and really mess with their heads."

Mark stopped what he was doing and stared. Ianto boarded Mark's train of thought and considered the possibility of the 456 having to contend with being suddenly dropped in a strange and hostile situation without warning. "So one way or the other the threat of the 456 is neutralised." Ianto nodded and so did Felicity. He looked up at the screen and frowned at the tiny wing of spacecraft who were moving into attack formation. "If only they can buy us enough time."

* * * 

As much as it galled him, Jack didn't press the point of securing UNIT's confiscated spacecraft minus any pilots. The crisis was too severe for egos to get in the way. The 456 had them outgunned and outmanned. They needed as many ships in the air as they could muster, and they needed them yesterday.

He ended the call with the Area Commander and racked the telephone receiver on his desk with a clatter. Martha punched him hard enough in the arm to sting. It had the desired effect. Jack looked up into a gaze of fire.

"Don't you dare sulk, Jack Harkness," Martha said. "You might be down, but you're not out for the count. Not yet."

Martha's sharp rebuke hit him like a bucket of icy water and shocked him out of his funk. Jack made himself a promise, then and there. He was never going to be in a crisis situation ever again without someone called 'Jones' at his side. He saluted crisply. "Yes, ma'am!"

He hadn't belayed the order to send the cloning pods to Burning Hollow. There were still ships on the ground without pilots. Maybe it wasn't the most Director of Torchwood sort of thing to do, but Jack wasn't one to sit out of a fight, especially when those under his command were out in the fray, risking everything. He needed to be in several places at once, and now, thanks to the cloning pods, he could be. He pushed out of his chair and gave Martha a hug.

"Where are you going?" she asked when Jack set her back down on the ground.

"We've got ships, and I know a hell of a pilot," Jack replied. He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out his RAF cap, which he then set on his head at a jaunty angle. "See you on the flip side, Dr Jones."

* * * 

'Tadpole' Razrak wasn't human, not that it mattered to Captain Jack. What mattered to Tadpole's CO was that he was a damn fine pilot, with quick reflexes, and a level head when faced with a crisis, like having a swirling Rift vortex appear out of nowhere mid-battle, after a surprise solar flare had already knocked out his navigation and guidance systems.

Earth was a long way from where he had been born, but Tadpole wasn't in any hurry to find his way back. He liked the people of Earth, even if they were mammals and unusually hairy. They had taken him in and made him welcome. When his name had proved to be unpronounceable, they had searched until they found a word that resembled its meaning. They had been kind to him, and helped him adapt to their planet. In return, he was more than willing to go to the defence of his adopted home.

But the 456 were proving to be even more of a challenge than the solar flare and the Rift.

The primary mission of Tadpole and his fellow pilots was to irritate the lead ship until those down below could come up with a better defence. Their secondary mission was to knock out as many of the drones as they could get to, to disrupt whatever the 456 were planning.

The drones had been deployed in a wide dispersal pattern, and some had already got through their meagre line. Only the Four Toed Creator knew what sort of damage they would do when they finally reached the Earth. A percentage of the drones had been pushed back into space by the partially constructed repulsion field, where they spun out of control, leaving the rest to the pilots to destroy as quickly they could acquire targets.

Tadpole lined up another drone in his sights and fired. It flared briefly and then died. He felt a thrill of triumph as he rolled his fighter to begin a new run.

And then he had an idea.

It was a wild idea. It was daring and dangerous. But he had to try. Tadpole pointed the nose of his ship towards the deployment port on the lead 456 vessel, and set his targeting sensors.

He held his palm over the triggering mechanism in preparation to fire.

He took a breath –

– and was escorted to the next plane of existence when a laser cannon on the 456 cut his ship in half without warning.

* * * 

As in most crisis situations, doctors were thin on the ground. What medical staff Torchwood possessed was out in the field. Felicity had cloned herself twice to help the doctors deployed to treat the Rift-displaced patients in hospital, but she still had responsibilities overseeing everyone under her command. Owen had sent his demonstration clone to ride herd on the cloning pods, although who was left to clone with all the pilots in the air, he didn't know. But that left him at relatively loose ends. He had parked himself in the clinic, doing fitness assessments on those who came through hoping to get stimulants to keep themselves on their feet for a few more hours.

Most of the time he complied. But for those agents heading into their third straight shift without a break, he directed them instead into the noncritical ward for a few hours of supervised kip. When they protested, Owen pointed at Dev, who was assisting him. Word had spread about the accident with the de-ageing ray. It was a potent reminder about how dangerous their work could be, and how fatigue could be as dangerous as a hostile alien. Mentioning the horrific pain Dev had experienced during the reversal process had a nearly miraculous effect when it came to cutting off back chat.

He had just dispensed a pick me up to an engineering tech, and was debating whether to take a dose himself, or stretch out on the nearest treatment bed, when a new alarm began to echo through the Hub.

"What the hell is that?" Owen asked, feeling suddenly both completely wide awake and very irritated.

"Trouble in the cells," Dev replied. The desk telephone rang and she picked it up, listened for a few seconds, and then held the receiver out to share what was happening on the other side. The sound of weevils howling came through loud and clear.

"They're going mad down there," Dev said. "No reason. They're just down on their knees screaming loud enough to frighten the damned."

Owen pressed his lips together. He'd done work with weevils. The brutish creatures held a strange fascination for him. He'd spent enough time with one of his test subjects, code named 'Janet', that Suzie had asked if she should be jealous. There was a field pack hanging on the coat tree by the doorway. Owen came to a fast decision. "Keep an eye on things." He scooped it up and ran for the cells.

* * * 

Flight Captain Kumar Dhawan might have had a hell of a record on the simulator, but he'd only been out of Earth's atmosphere on one other occasion, and that had been his certification flight. Then, he'd been impressed by how small he felt in proportion to the cosmos. Now he felt a curious sort of numbness, like he was a step removed from everything. Maybe he was overwhelmed by being in an actual battle scenario, but there was none of the adrenaline rush he'd experienced when he'd been hooked up to the VR simulator and faced down a host of computer-generated hostile fighters.

But numb or excited, he was what he was, one of UNIT's few spaceworthy pilots, and he had a job to do.

Below him, Torchwood's fighter group was flitting around, targeting the drones the lead vessel was dropping at irregular intervals. They were doing their best, but there had only been a dozen of them to begin with. Kumar watched a stubby-winged craft get cut down. Now there were only ten. Ten, and a dozen UNIT pilots, newly arrived on scene to provide support. Supposedly, there were other contingents, coming from bases in Russia and America. Kumar hoped he would receive confirmation they were lifting off, soon.

"Watch those laser cannons, boys," the lead Torchwood pilot said by way of greeting. And then he added, "Tadpole had a good idea. Form up. We'll make another run on that drop bay. UNIT One, the drones are yours."

"Acknowledge that, Torchwood Leader," Kumar replied crisply.

He identified the nearest target. The auto-acquisition system locked on. Kumar flexed his fingers, releasing the tension in his hands. He reached forward in preparation to fire. Tendrils of fog slipped into his brain. They were so subtle. So insidious. He was powerless to react as a profound paralysis overtook him, trapping him inside his own head.

He couldn't speak. He couldn't move. He felt nothing as his ship collided with the drone and then spun off into space.

* * * 

PC Brynne Post was a new transfer, but she'd been in Cardiff long enough to know that it wasn't your average, run of the mill, city. Cardiff was … odd. Things happened. Strange things. Strange enough that Cardiff had its own division of Special Branch called Torchwood assigned to it.

Over the last couple of days, Torchwood's vans and SUVs had been all over the city. She'd been instructed that, if they showed up at an incident scene, she was to walk away without question as soon as she was dismissed. To linger was to do so at her own peril.

Now she understood why.

Torchwood dealt with monsters.

There were _creatures_ boiling out of the sewers. Fanged, powerfully-muscled looking _things_ , that stared up at the sky as they clutched their heads and howled.

Brynne's blood went cold in her veins. She pressed tightly against an alley wall, attempting to blend in with the stones. With trembling fingers, she reached for the microphone hanging against her collarbone.

"Sarge! Urgent assistance required! I repeat! Urgent assistance! Greyfriars Street, adjacent to the Crown and Goose! Send backup. Send Torchwood!"

One of the creatures swivelled its lumpish head towards her, baring its hideous yellow fangs.

Brynne screamed.

And then they were on her.

* * * 

Two streets over, Sergeant Jack Gant was in no position to help. He discharged his TASER, and the leads bounced harmlessly off the weevil that was barrelling towards him. Out of options, he turned and ran, head down, legs pumping harder than they'd ever pumped before, deaf to the pleas for assistance that were coming over his radio like so much white noise.

* * * 

Drew levelled his gun and fired. He hated this part of the job. Resorting to lethal force felt like a failure, like he hadn't done everything he could to de-escalate the situation he'd been tasked to contend with. But the weevils weren't leaving him any choice. Whatever was going on in their heads had suppressed their peculiar sense of reason completely. No matter what tactics his team employed, they refused to retreat back into the sewers.

Instead, they'd become an army of berserkers.

"Fall back, lads!" Drew put two rounds between the lead weevil's eyes. It howled at him, and used its remaining energy to lunge.

Drew skittered backwards on rain-damped pavement, but he wasn't fast enough. His last thought before the weevil tore into his throat was, "I should have taken more care." As he died, he took comfort in the idea that his mistakes might be instructive to some other field agent, and thus, wouldn't be repeated.

* * * 

Owen ran all the way to the cell block. When he arrived, the guard looked decidedly pale, as if he might be sick.

"It's awful," he said and then put his hands to his head as if he was trying to protect himself.

Over the years Owen had studied dozens of weevils. He'd developed a number of theories about the organisation of their society, and why, occasionally, it was possible to get through to them. Dissections had proved that the structure of their vocal cords made human speech, or anything like it, impossible. The best they could manage were the grunts and hoots that made them sound like great apes. But they often silently communed with one another and, if one was in their company long enough, it was possible to get a sense of their thoughts. It seemed very likely that there was a telepathic component to their language, and they communicated by thought as much as through verbalisation.

"Of course!" The explanation hit him like a tonne of bricks. The weevils were psi sensitive. The 456 supposedly had the ability to use telepathy or psychic manipulation. "It's those damn aliens!" Either the weevils didn't like someone messing around in their heads, or whatever frequency the 456 was using was never meant for weevils, and it was causing them pain. Either way, it was pissing the weevils off, and an enraged weevil was never a good thing.

When the weevils in the cell saw Owen, they rushed forward. The bars rattled menacingly as they were tested. It might have been Owen's imagination, but he thought, when the lead weevil pulled himself off to attack again, that the bars had bowed. "It's not down to me, mate," he said, putting his hands up to demonstrate his blamelessness.

The weevil wasn't having any of it. He threw himself against the bars again.

"We've got to knock them out!" Owen said tersely to the security officer in charge of the cells. She looked much more healthy than the guard that had met him at the doorway. "Put on a mask. Flood the cells, and the corridors between them, with anaesthetic gas." More weevils in other cells joined the first in their attack on the bars. Owen had a horrific flash of marauding weevils roaming the tunnels of Torchwood "Do it! Now!"

The security officer slapped a red button on the wall. A klaxon sounded; the signal for all personnel to evacuate the secure level. "After you, doctor," she said, waving a hand towards the door.

Owen took one last look at the enraged weevils and wondered what the hell it was like topside. As he bolted for the door, he supposed he'd find out soon enough.

* * * 

In the main lab, Felicity dropped the tiny screwdriver she was in the process of handing off to Mark. She clutched her temples. "They're in my head."

Engrossed in their work, and busy acting as additional hands for Mark and the technicians assisting him, neither Ianto had kept more than a cursory eye on the space battle. Now they looked up in tandem and swore quietly. "We're losing."

Mark handed his soldering iron off to engineering technician Nadine Trinidad, and went to Felicity's side. "Talk to me. Tell me what's happening."

"They're … trying to get inside me. They want control."

"Block them," both Iantos said. They looked at one another and shrugged. Twice given, it was still good advice. 

"Don't let them in," Clone Ianto urged.

Mark stared at Felicity, and then his glance darted to the machine they were working on. It was clear he wasn't sure defence was the best course of action.

"She's not a lab animal," Ianto said. 

"If they access her mind, she could tip our hand," his clone argued.

Ianto, the original Ianto, put his hand to his ear as a call came through. "Keep me informed," he said to the caller. "It's not just Dr Porter. Other people have been affected. They've simply stopped what they're doing. And they've got to the weevils."

"The weevils?" Mark said with a frown. "To what affect?"

Ianto replied. "Whatever signal they're sending is driving them mad. They've had to anaesthetise the cells. Outside, despite the curfew order, they're causing mass panic in the streets. Dozens of them have come out of the sewers, baying for blood." 

Mark surveyed Nadine's work. He pointed at one more spot in the innards of the machine and she made another connection. "That's it."

He stepped away from the modified device and went to a computer workstation. There, he typed in an instruction set, linking the interrogation machine with a radio transmitter. Then he returned to the machine and activated a series of controls. "Let's see if we can't turn this around. There. The 456's carrier wave is feeding the signal from the psychic probe back onto the ship."

Agonising seconds passed by at a crawl. Nothing seemed to happen.

Ianto stared into Felicity's face and came to a decision. "Up the gain."

Mark nodded grimly. And then, with a deliberate motion, he turned the knob controlling the signal strength to maximum.

Felicity gasped and then she started to collapse as if she'd been struck at the knees. Both Iantos grabbed her to keep her from falling, and then Clone Ianto dashed for a chair.

"Better?" Ianto asked.

Felicity nodded slowly. "It was like fingers reaching into my brain. Whispering fingers, demanding I yield to them." She smiled a cold smile. "I sang _Maresy Dotes and Dosey Dotes_ in my head, like they'd taught us during interrogation resistance training. Hopefully, that confused them."

She cupped her face in her hands and shook it sharply in a visceral reaction to having something _alien_ inside her head. When she looked up again, Clone Ianto pressed a bottle of water into her hands, and she drank from it gratefully, taking measured sips. "I don't think I've ever been so frightened."

Ianto took another incoming call. "The weevils are breaking off their attacks. Weird. They're just dropping to the ground and clutching their heads."

"Maybe that's why we've never been able to get through to them," Felicity speculated. "Whatever frequency their minds operate on, it's different to ours." Her eyes widened as she looked at the cobbled together machine. Smoke was drifting upwards in delicate tendrils. "Mark! It's overloading!"

Nadine, the technician, bolted for a fire extinguisher, pulling it off the wall with a decisive jerk. But before she could get back across the room, there was a sharp snap and crackle noise and the device ignited, sending up a shower of sparks, and filling the room with the scent of burnt wires and ozone.

"Blast it!" Mark swore as his device was covered in fire-suppressing foam. "So much for hooking up Phase II."

"No VR for the 456?" said Clone Ianto. "Shame."

"But what we did do – " Felicity looked upwards, as if she was contemplating their enemy above them. "– was it enough?"

* * * 

Jack felt the 456 try and sneak their way into his brain, and he didn't like it one damn bit. He pushed them out, fortified his psychic shielding, and quietly thanked his instructors at the Time Academy, who had insisted, even though he was no great whiz in the telepathy department, that he keep up his lessons. They had repeatedly insisted that the ability to repel a psychic invasion could mean the difference between life and death, a point that had been well proved once he'd been turned loose in the field.

Given that he was blasting down the highway at over ninety miles an hour, it was easy to concede that they still had a point. If he had been overtaken, losing control of his Mercedes at that speed would have resulted in a painful and inconvenient death, not to mention the loss of the car, which would have meant running the last five miles to Burning Hollow.

The countryside was nice. After the spate of rainy days, everything around him was fresh and green, but he hadn't the time to stop and sniff the flowers. Jack had been keeping tabs, listening to both the emergency services radio traffic and that of his own central dispatcher. The 456 were playing rough, and although Earth's finest were giving their all, the 456 were still kicking their collective butts.

He needed to get up into space and give the 456 a piece of his mind.

The gates of the estate came into view. Jack punched a button on the dash, bypassing the security system, which was useful because no one was on sentry duty. The gates swung open and he drove straight to the hangar, parked, and strode into the open bay. "Knock. Knock," Jack said loudly to announce his unscheduled arrival.

"Captain!" Andy Davidson pushed out from underneath a needle-nosed, Zather-class, fighter. "We weren't expecting you."

Around him a handful of technicians were working feverishly on the remaining ships, in anticipation of re-enforcements.

"Where's Owen?" Jack asked.

It was Clone Owen who was on site. He was just as sour-faced as the original might be over his assignment, but he was being useful, standing at the ready to hand over tools and components to a wiry, ginger-haired technician named Sid. "You called, Captain?"

Jack grinned a wolfish smile. "Light up those pods, doctor. You've got a customer."

Clone Owen picked up a rag off his tray of tools and components, wiped his hands carefully, and then made a sweeping motion towards the rear of the bay. "After you, Captain Harkness."

Six cloning tubes – Torchwood's entire inventory minus the latest arrival – stood lined up in a neat row at the back of the workshop.

Jack glanced at Clone Owen, who in return, made a 'well go on then' gesture at him. "I just hold my hand – " He turned his hand palm down.

"That's right," Clone Owen replied. "Just put your hand, palm down, in the scan field." The watch on his right wrist began to beep. He glanced down at it and pulled an irritated face. "And you'd better get a move on if you want me to hold your other hand. My runtime is about to expire."

Jack frowned. Had it been that many hours ago that Owen, the new Owen, had demonstrated his innovation with the cloning pod? He glanced out at the fading day and supposed it had been. He stood in front of the first tube and held his palm out to be scanned. The panel lit up and then he was grasped by invisible arms.

"Relax," Owen II said. "Don't fight the force field. It's holding you steady so that the replicator doesn't make any scanning errors."

The whole thing was weird, and Jack wasn't afraid to admit that he thought so. After what seemed like an interminable amount of time, the invisible arms loosened their grip.

Clone Owen glanced down at his watch again. "Nothing more to do but to wait." He looked up at Jack. "I thought you wanted to make multiple copies."

Jack nodded.

Clone Owen clapped his hands together. "Then, chop chop! You know how it works now."

Jack nodded. Then he went down the line, allowing himself to be scanned by each machine.

Clone Owen followed him, frowning at the readouts on the cloning tubes. "Hmm. I hope you weren't planning on sending up more clones after these."

"Why?" Jack asked.

"Because every one of these tubes have gone into regen mode." He seemed to anticipate Jack's question. "Oh, it will pop this lot out, no problem. But it's like those toner cartridges, when they hit a certain point, they don't copy right any more. I think Suzie might have found a way round it, something to do with feeding the matrix material back onto itself, but I don't really remember." He shrugged. "Actually, to be completely honest, I wasn't listening."

Clone Owen glanced at his watch one more time. "Now. I really must go discorporate." He tipped his head towards a rack of coveralls and flight suits hanging nearby. "Andy can help with the rest." He seemed to consider for a moment, and then said, "Good luck, Jack. From what's coming over the radio, you're going to need it."

He turned on his heel and walked out onto the expansive lawn, peeling off his coveralls as he strolled. When he paused, he kicked them the rest of the way off and then removed his watch, dropping it on top of his clothing. Finally, he moved a few more yards out onto the grass, and then stood quietly, with his face tilted up towards the sky.

Jack watched as the clone took what appeared to be a resigned breath, and then he began to melt, like a candle, until there was nothing left of him.

A shudder of revulsion rolled over his frame. Every copy he made was going to come to the same end. "Unless they get slaughtered in battle," he reminded himself.

With that cheerful thought echoing round his brain, Jack returned to the back of the bay to wait for the cloning tubes to complete their cycles.

* * * 

Ianto II nodded as he listened to the command and control technician monitoring the situation above them. "Right. Thanks for that." He gave the rest of his team a small, pleased, smile. "The machine had some effect. The 456 has stopped dropping drones. They also ceased firing defensive weapons long enough for our fighters to disable the lead 456 vessel."

Mark grinned so broadly that his cheeks turned rosy. He raised a hand and slapped palms with Nadine. "Yes!"

"Which still leaves us two ships to contend with," Ianto finished grimly. He surveyed the damaged machine. "Is there any hope of salvaging the wreckage?"

Mark pressed his lips together. He tilted his head this way and that and then shook it. "Not as such. But – " He extended his hand and Nadine leapt lightly from the lab bench, where she'd perched, to retrieve a notepad and pen, which she then handed off to her supervisor. "We've learnt quite a bit from this experience. We know what band the 456 use as a carrier wave, and we've verified that we can ride their signal or generate our own." He sketched for a few moments, made a dissatisfied noise, and X-ed out whatever he'd drawn, turned to a fresh sheet, and started off again.

* * * 

There was nothing about this day that wasn't weird, Jack thought to himself as he watched six mismatched fighters piloted by six identical pilots lift off into the sunset to join the space battle.

"Do you suppose they'll make a difference?" Andy asked quietly.

"I've got to hope so," Jack replied. "Otherwise, we might as well pack it in right now and give into the 456's demands." He pulled a face that reflected his extreme dissatisfaction.

Andy matched his frown. "What?"

"I hate that name," Jack replied. " _456._ It sounds so … I don't know. Hypothetical. Like the sort of thing you'd use for a training exercise. _The 456 have entered a geosynchronous orbit, and made an extortion demand. What steps do you follow to determine if they're serious, or just a bunch of extraterrestrial jerks on a wind up?_ " He turned to Andy. "Do you see what I'm saying?"

Andy nodded he understood, but then he said, "Although, it does sort of go along with their faceless nature. _456_. Keeps us from presupposing anything about them, and makes us concentrate on what we do know."

Jack realised that Andy, and whoever came up with the name in the first place, had a point. Any sort of name created a mental picture based on the biases of the imaginer. They had to judge the 456 based on their actions, because they had nothing else to go on. It was a cold and clinical approach, devoid of emotion. It was worthy of a bureaucrat.

Jack's mobile called for his attention, using the special ringtone reserved for a secure channel. "Speaking of bureaucrats –" Andy gave Jack a bewildered look as he turned away and took the call. "Prime Minister! So what's the latest in Downing Street?"

Quite a lot, as it turned out. Word was spreading that something odd was going on, primarily concentrated in the UK, but other parts of the world had been affected as well. The psychic attack had caused pandemonium as people stopped what they were doing without warning, freezing in place at the wheels of cars, or mid-zebra crossing. Children had been affected in significant numbers. There were whispers in Whitehall that the Sycorax were behind the attack, eager for retribution over the destruction of their slave ship.

"I did warn you it could get ugly," Jack said. He frowned at the mention of the Sycorax, but almost immediately dismissed the idea that they were the 456. The Sycorax had used A Positive blood taken from a space probe to fuel their psychic hijack. The 456 had controlled those who were psi-sensitive. Felicity Porter had been caught up in the attack, and she was a universal donor, type O Negative.

Still, it came as no surprise that children had been affected in greater numbers than adults. Children had more psi-sensitive receptors in their brains, making it possible for them to experience things that adults couldn't. It would take scientists another two hundred years to work out why, for most people, those receptors closed off during adolescence.

"You've got to stay strong, sir." Jack looked up into a twilight sky and imagined the copies of himself joining the battle. "We've stood up to the 456. And this time, they will back off."

* * * 

After the 456 launched their first salvo, it had made a certain degree of sense for Ianto to move command and control down to the main engineering lab. There, they could still track the various situations around Cardiff, while attempting to find a solution for their current dilemma: they needed to find a transmitter powerful enough to repel a further psychic attack, should the 456 launch one.

Dark, and the cessation of weevil-induced strife, had granted Ianto a temporary reprieve from the burdens of oversight. He used the period of relative calm to revivify himself with a cup of strong coffee and a cheese sandwich that someone had brought down from the canteen. He'd parked himself out of the way at a workstation, where he could keep one eye on any incoming situation reports, while listening to Mark and his technicians, and the rest of the command staff, brainstorm. His mobile rang with Jack's ringtone. Ianto flinched in surprise, caught off guard. He realised that, since the last briefing in the conference room, he'd been so buried in his work that he'd completely lost track of Jack's whereabouts.

"You've done what?" Ianto listened with resignation as Jack related his latest adventure. "Hold the line for a moment. I need to tell the others." He muted the connection. "Jack has gone to Burning Hollow. He had himself cloned repeatedly, and then took up six spaceworthy fighters to shore up the line against the 456."

Martha shook her head, and rolled her eyes heavenward, which matched Ianto's feelings on Jack's actions perfectly. "So _that's_ what he meant," she exclaimed. When she noticed Ianto's upraised eyebrow, Martha added, "He told me you had spaceships going spare, and he knew a hell of a pilot." 

Felicity's brow furrowed at the mention of Burning Hollow. It took Ianto a few guilty seconds to realise that Andy had been sent there earlier to oversee operations, and like Jack and himself, since they'd been split up, both halves of the couple had been too busy to communicate with one another.

He switched his focus back to Jack, and listened some more before turning towards Owen, who had wandered in a few minutes earlier. "He also said to tell you, Owen, that you weren't wrong about the clones' expiration being messy."

Owen looked down at his Torchwood-provided watch, gauged the time, and then shrugged. "Time does fly when you're not having fun." He looked down at his watch again. "Speaking of which, you should make sure any doubles you've created are somewhere out of the public eye. They're probably not going to hold their cohesion much longer."

Ianto visualised himself turning into a puddle of goo and grimaced. He'd had the clones issued watches with digital timers set to go off twenty minutes before their expiration, but in a crisis, the beeping reminder could easily be ignored. "Right," he said. "Felicity, would you make those calls?"

He was about to return his attention to Jack when Martha raised her hand to get his attention. Ianto nodded back at her. Her news was too important not to relay. "Martha says to tell you that she's been on the phone with UNIT. Her contact in Area Command said that they successfully retrieved one of the drones and analysed its payload. It contained a mutagenic agent. It seems it was bio-engineered in such a way that once dispersed, it could mutate any viral pathogen. Under its influence, even the common cold could be weaponised. They could have started a pandemic amongst the human or the animal population. They could have wiped out a grain or vegetable crop. It just depended on what sort of organism the mutagen came into contact with."

Ianto listened to Jack's reply. "Fortunately, the Americans and the Russians leant a hand. They were able to intercept the drones that our combined contingent missed. The threat from the advance ship is completely neutralised. Unfortunately, our counter attack cost us the feedback generator. " Ianto paused his report. "I don't know. Mark is attempting to make repairs, but the damage was extensive."

Mark was hunched over his computer terminal, feeding equations into the mainframe. He sat back and then shook his head, sending what was left of his ponytail loose from its holder. "Ianto, patch me through. I need to speak to the boss."

Ianto nodded. "Something's come up. I'm putting Mark on the line." He switched the channel to one that could be shared. "Go ahead, Mark."

Mark beckoned over one of his technicians and handed him a sheet of marked up paper. The tech glanced down at the sheet and took a Stores retrieval form from the stack on the desk and began to fill it out.

"Boss, it's me. I've come up with an idea, but I don't like it. No. I'm almost positive you're going to hate it, but I've run the numbers twice and it still seems like the best solution. We tried running a psychic probe back through the 456's transmission. And it worked, right up until it smoked the machinery. The problem is, the transmitter we used, it just wasn't strong enough. But we do have a transmitter that's much, much, stronger."

Ianto frowned. There was only one transmitter he knew of that seemed to meet their requirements. Mark seemed to anticipate his reservations. "We wouldn't actually open a Rift portal, although I've got to admit, opening a hole large enough to shove the 456 through is tempting. We'd just push the transmission link through the tower's electronics."

The signal from Burning Hollow momentarily cut out. Ianto tapped his head set. "Jack, are you there?"

Several tense seconds later, Jack came back on the line. "Do it. Get that transmitter online quick as you can."

Abruptly, the call ended without so much as a single reassurance or request for luck. Feeling a peculiar sense of dread, Ianto shrugged at Mark. "Apparently, we have our instructions."

* * * 

_Earth Defence Force, this is Wild Card One, come to join the party._

Errol Brown, aka Torchwood One, felt his jaw drop in surprise. He deliberately shut his mouth as he watched half a dozen fighters, ships he had last seen neatly lined up in the hangar at Burning Hollow, barrel roll into formation with the rest of the task force. "Cap?" he squeaked, and then cleared his throat. "Uh, glad you could make it, sir."

_You know me, Torchwood One. Any excuse to get out of the office._

_Wild Card One, please verify your identity,_ said UNIT Leader.

Captain Harkness dropped his fun-loving persona and became all business as he replied, _UNIT Leader, this is Captain Jack Harkness, Director of Torchwood. Now that the introductions are out of the way, what's the status of that 456 ship?_

_They've gone quiet, sir._

UNIT Leader had sounded awestruck. Maybe he wasn't used to a commanding officer who got stuck in the same way Captain Harkness did, Errol thought, as he grinned smugly.

_Earth Defence Force. Urgent Communication. Two incoming 456 vessels headed your way on vector 259._

The smug feeling eroded. Errol looked down at his screen. Moments earlier, the only enemy ship in the area had been the one the task force had been harassing. Now there were two more, and they were nearly on top of the fighter group.

"Roger that, Control," he replied. Before it had gone quiet, the first 456 ship had used laser cannons, but only in a defensive capacity. With any luck, the new ships would be as lightly armed. If they launched their own fighters, then the task force would be done for.

"First Torchwood contingent, on me." Errol took a breath to steady his rapidly beating heart and then he thumbed the switch on his mic again. "UNIT Leader, we'll take Incoming Vessel One. I.V. Two is yours. Wild Card Leader, split your force and shore up our numbers."

_Roger that, Torchwood One,_ both Captain Harkness, and UNIT Leader replied promptly.

The fighters dropped into a line, putting themselves between the invading ships and the Earth.

Errol cleared his throat again, this time against a sudden attack of nerves. "456 ships, your presence is a violation of the terms set forth by the Shadow Proclamation. Withdraw immediately. I repeat. Withdraw immediately."

Time slowed to a crawl. Seconds stretching into infinity.

And then the 456 opened fire, strafing the defenders with laser fire.

Evasive manoeuvres, honed under hours in the simulator, saved Errol's life. He rolled out of the line of fire, took a shaking breath, and dove into the fray again as those around him put up a valiant defence.


	5. Chapter 5

* * * 

"Mark, this is insane," Ianto said in his most reasonable tone. What their head technician was proposing sounded ludicrous. Or maybe it made perfect sense. In a world gone mad, maybe the insane approach was the most logical.

Mark pointed at the not-quite rebuilt psychic probe. "We know it works. But I can't wire it straight into the Rift Manipulator, the circuitry is incompatible. Maybe if we had more time we could make the necessary modifications. But we don't have more time. Our ships up there are getting slaughtered. If we wait much longer, there won't be anything left between us and the 456."

Ianto pressed the palms of his hand against his eyes, thinking furiously. He knew Jack would endorse the plan, there was no point in asking his opinion. If anything, explaining what they'd come up with would only waste valuable time. "Fine. Load the vans. "You. Me – "

"You're not leaving me out of this, Ianto Jones," Martha said. Her tone strongly suggested that if he tried, there'd be hell to pay.

Ianto looked around the room, at the rest of the set and expectant faces. Felicity, Dev – who had come to give a status report and never left – even Rift-displaced Owen. "Fine. We'll make a party of it."

And then everything became a sort of controlled chaos as multiple conversations broke out at once, and seemingly out of nowhere, more people appeared and began to shift the necessary equipment out of the laboratory. In other parts of the Hub, similar frenetic activity was occurring as technicians raided the Stores and the Archive, carrying equipment down to the loading bay in preparation for the trip to Burning Hollow.

* * * 

It was an odd feeling, Jack I thought as Jack III's ship was blown apart, watching yourself get shot to pieces. He didn't waste time mourning, instead he gunned his fighter, accelerating into a sharp upward spiral, as he covered UNIT Leader's backside. They were in a holding action. Every pilot knew it. If they could harass and harry the 456 long enough, then those on Earth could get their weapons back online. They could launch a real attack. One that might put an end to the 456 once and for all.

At least that was the plan.

In the meantime, the tiny contingent of fighters ducked and dived. They raked the 456 with their laser cannons and ion pulsers, and did their damnedest not to get raked in return. 

"Come on... Yes!" Jack muttered as he lined up a fresh approach on the targeting computer. There was an opening. It was a small one, and the timing had to be perfect. But success meant one less death-dealing laser cannon to harass the task force.

"I'm going in, boys!"

Jack I took a breath, and then he punched the accelerator. He grazed the ball of his thumb against the firing mechanism lightly, caressing it lovingly. "Come on, baby," he cooed to the fighter. "Make Papa proud."

"Target acquired," announced the computer in a flat, mechanical voice.

The rest of the battle faded out from around him. Jack I's world shrunk to the laser cannon and the trigger mechanism under his thumb. He drew a breath, and depressed the button. Twin beams of energy tore into the skin of the 456 ship, leaving twisted metal behind them. They impacted with the cannon. For a few brief seconds, fire blossomed as the gasses feeding the laser ignited.

The thrill of success made Jack I shiver with delight. A renewed sense of optimism buoyed his spirits as he arced sharply away from the blast zone, ready to take on a new target.

* * * 

Ianto's breath caught in his throat when he laid eyes on Jack. He was decked out in a flight suit, in anticipation of their arrival. He looked dead sexy and radiated an ebullient sense of confidence that seemed to affect those who were working frenetically around him. For an undignified moment, Ianto felt his heart swell, and he had to quell the impulse to run up to Jack and sweep him into an embrace. He ducked his head instead, and took a deep breath, as he attempted to get his overwrought emotions under control.

Jack didn't bother with propriety. When he saw Ianto, a delighted smile broke over his face, lighting his eyes and making them even more intensely blue. "Come here, you," he said, and then he gathered Ianto into a hug.

Decorum be damned. Ianto's nerves were stretched to the breaking point. He was tired and overwrought and well aware that if things didn't go to plan, he might never be able to hold Jack again. He let himself be embraced, and he embraced Jack fiercely in return, breathing in the scent of sweat and machinery that overlaid Jack's aftershave, and the sudden burst of attraction pheromones that only he could detect.

Jack brushed their lips together. Unmindful of witnesses, Ianto took it further, anchoring the back of Jack's head with his hands so that they could share a long and passionate kiss.

Nearby, an engine cranked over. Ianto became once more aware of where they were, and what they were about to do. With regret, he disentangled himself from the security of Jack's arms and stepped out of the embrace, noticing peripherally that he and Jack weren't the only ones to momentarily abandon protocol. Andy had his arms around Felicity. They were standing a little apart from the rest of the group, heads together, speaking softly.

"We're going to get through this, Ianto." Jack's face was solemn as he made his vow. "I promise."

Ianto wanted to believe. He needed to believe. Everything he had done over the last years had been building towards this conflict. Now that it had arrived, not surviving it wasn't an option.

"Yeah. Of course we are," he replied, suddenly deeply aware of how studiously the rest of the team was involved in unloading the vans and transferring their cargo onto two of the remaining shuttle craft.

"You planning a boarding party?" Jack asked as he watched pulse rifles, laser pistols, and sonic grenades being loaded.

"No," Ianto replied. "But I thought you might be."

Jack clasped Ianto's shoulder and gave it a squeeze, one last physical reassurance that everything would be all right. He grinned, and his eyes twinkled merrily. "Always be prepared, eh, Ianto?"

"It never hurts," Ianto replied lightly. He didn't mind Jack's teasing, but it occurred to him, that if he really had been prepared, he would have managed to drive out to the hangar separately, a half an hour ahead of the rest of the team, so that he and Jack could have had a proper send off.

Jack seemed to have read Ianto's mind. His grin grew puckish. "If you want, I can help you get into your flight suit."

"You mean out of my clothes," Ianto translated.

"To_may_ta, to_ma_toe," Jack teased in a sing song voice.

And just like that, Ianto found his emotional equilibrium and everything seemed all right again. As fraught with portent as the confrontation was with the 456, this wasn't their first crisis, and in all likelihood, it wouldn't be their last. He glanced over at Jack through the veil of his eyelashes and said, "What if, when all of this is over, I let you help me out of my flight suit instead?"

"Oh, Ianto Jones," Jack chuckled and the sound made shivers dance over Ianto's skin. "the things you say."

"The things you imagine, you mean," Ianto replied, letting a quiet appreciation for Jack's vivid imagination colour his tone. 

Mark strode up to them, with Andy in tow, and the private moment ended.

* * * 

Andy settled in the pilot's seat of the retrofitted shuttle craft, took a deep breath, and let it out again slowly. "It's just like driving the van," he reassured himself as he flexed his fingers in their closely-fitted gloves, and tried to ignore the confines of the E-suit, with its too tight collar, and all the implications of what wearing it meant.

He'd learnt a lot of odd skills since joining Torchwood, and found himself in a lot of places he'd never expected to be, but astronaut had never been one of his ambitions. He'd learnt to fly the shuttle craft, just like he'd learnt to pilot a boat, because it was a necessary skill back in the days when he was one of a handful of agents. He'd kept up his qualifications, even after he'd been bumped up the ranks, because there was always the possibility that a day like this one would come. Torchwood was still too few for a crisis of this magnitude, and yet the job was theirs to do all the same.

He scanned the control console and saw rows of retrofitted green indicators shining brightly. All systems were in good working order and ready. A glance backwards at his passengers revealed tense and expectant faces. Training scenarios aside, no one knew what they were letting themselves in for. They just didn't know enough about the 456.

_Control, this is Shuttle One. We are good to go._

Jack's confidence boomed through the comm system. Andy wondered if they really were ready or if they were just out of time. When he'd last seen Mark, he and his technicians had been feverishly working over a piece of hardware that was supposed to be key to their mission as all of them, Mark, the technician, and the box, were boarding Shuttle One.

_Roger that, Shuttle One. You are cleared for lift off._

Well, ready or not, things were about to kick off. Andy took one last backwards glance at his passengers. Felicity gave a few final instructions in low tones to Owen and Dev before moving to the co-pilot's chair. She gave Andy a tight smile and then buckled herself securely in. The two technical specialists, who had spent most of the last twelve hours frantically wrenching on half-rebuilt fighters, were both asleep, taking advantage of the downtime.

Andy envied their ability to disengage. He touched the microphone control mounted in the collar of his E-suit. "Control, this is Shuttle Two. We are ready for lift off."

_Roger that, Shuttle Two. Godspeed and thank you._

Andy frowned at the breach in radio protocol, and then he remembered that Alan Dash, who was on the other side of the microphone, was dating Robin Aterley. Robin's fighter was currently hanging dead in space, and its distress beacon was broadcasting an SOS. It was Shuttle Two's grim mission, once they'd done what they could do about the 456, to bring pilots like Robin – the injured and the dead – home.

For a sombre moment, Andy's thoughts drifted to Drew, and he had to swallow a lump in his throat. The last few days had cost them dearly. So many lives had already been lost or irrevocably altered. Now the Earth was facing a massive challenge. The next few hours would determine if there would be anyone left to pick up the pieces and mourn the dead, or if all of their suffering and sacrifices had been for nothing.

* * * 

"Mark, how we doing back there?"

Jack kept his tone jaunty, even though, despite his earlier morale-boosting clinch with Ianto, he wasn't feeling especially cheerful. Although the situation hadn't been entirely of his making, the 456 returning to Earth still felt like his fault. If they hadn't given in then, then the 456 wouldn't be knocking on their door now. At least that's how the situation stacked up in his head. There was a dull feeling of anger burning his guts, the kind that had a tendency to flare white hot with even the slightest provocation, and he wasn't entirely sure how he'd react when he finally came face to face with the 456.

Mark didn't reply right away. He had his attention divided between the machinery under his hands, the guts of which were open and exposed while they were being worked upon, and a team of technicians back at Torchwood, who were recalibrating the Rift manipulator so that it could be used in a way that had never been intended.

Someone must have nudged him and let him know that he was being addressed. "Sorry, Boss. Full hands."

"Don't worry about it," Jack replied. "Question still stands, though."

"Just a little more fine-tuning," Mark promised, and then he was gone again, communing with the machinery in the bulky black metal box.

The plan was a straightforward one. Neutralise the 456 and bring their people, the ones that couldn't make it on their own steam, home. Piece of cake. Except success was dependent on the the jury-rigged alien technology that had already fried most of its circuits, and wasn't quite completely rebuilt.

But Mark was confident. And Mark and his team were good at their jobs. If they said it would be done in time for the big showdown, then it would be.

Or else things could get very awkward.

Very quickly.

Jack blew out a breath. This wasn't the time or the place for that sort of negative thinking. But clearly Ianto had anticipated the chance of failure as well. He'd kitted out each member of both shuttles with pulse rifles and laser blasters. There were limpet mines that could be planted by a mortar contraption. All they had to do was pilot the shuttles close enough, and then launch the mines through the open bay door.

But that was one of the reasons that Ianto's way of doing things complimented his so well. Ianto's measured approach, his love of contingency planning, counterbalanced Jack's impetuousness. With Ianto around, he was much less likely to barrel into a situation half-cocked, depending on enthusiasm, or a sense of moral outrage, to see himself through the day.

Jack glanced down at the proximity display. They were out of the ionosphere, and the space between the shuttles and the 456 was rapidly decreasing.

"Ten minutes until contact," he announced.

Ready or not, they were about to engage the 456.

* * * 

Jack I watched with a sick sensation roiling the pit of his stomach, as the stubby wing of a Russian-piloted fighter was clipped by a lethal stream of laser energy. Off-balance, the fighter tumbled helplessly back into the range of the 456's cannon, and was blown apart.

A surge of adrenaline pumped through his bloodstream, intensifying the nauseous feeling. He swallowed hard, forcing down a rising column of bile that left behind a bitter taste in his mouth.

They were down to a handful. Everywhere Jack I looked, disabled and dead fighters hung helplessly in space. Worse, not all of the pilots had been killed outright when their ships were hit. Some were alive and injured, facing a painful death by slow suffocation as their oxygen reserves were exhausted.

It made his own eventual ending, disincorporating when his runtime expired, seem humane.

He watched Eagle Leader, head of the American contingent, zip to the defence of another pilot, at great risk to himself. It was a brave and daring thing to do. It was also incredibly dangerous.

The fly-wing ship escaped, but Eagle Leader wasn't so lucky. He was cut down mid-barrel roll, and spun off into the wreckage of another dead ship.

They needed reinforcements. And they needed them now.

Jack I saw another opening. He dove into it, firing a burst of proton energy at the 456 ship, and fervently prayed that his people on the ground would hurry the hell up.

* * * 

Jack watched with a sort of numb fascination as a fighters, some of which he'd patched together with his own two hands, harassed the 456. They were like flies, he thought. Small irritants that the 456 casually swatted when they became too annoying. And yet they kept at it, darting in, strafing the larger ships with their laser cannons and pulse guns, and then darting away again.

He recognised a Jardani 222 that had caused him particular grief. During its overhaul, he had lacked the right tools to calibrate the gyro-stabilisers. In the end, he'd yanked the entire system out and replaced it with one from a scrapped Tash X-1. Once in the air, the old crate had handled like a dream. 

Now it was being piloted by one of his clones, Jack didn't remember which one, and he supposed it didn't matter, because even if they survived the battle they were destined to melt, just as the Owen clone had. This clone seemed to be targeting the 456's fuelling ports, in a mad attempt to blow up the 456 from the inside. It was a crazy plan, but there was a possibility it just might work. 

Another clone-piloted ship went to the defence of the Jardani 222. It laid down covering fire, allowing the Jardani 222 to line up its run. 

Jack watched with baited breath. The timing had to be perfect. 

"Come on," he whispered, urging his clones on. 

The 456 initiated defensive measures, blasting away at the two clone-piloted ships. The support craft was hit, and it blew apart, leaving the Jardani 222 undefended. 

Jack couldn't stand it. It wasn't in his nature to do nothing more than watch. 

Shuttles weren't meant for fire fights. They were too big and bulky, for starters, and severely lacked in the manoeuvrability department. They did have a few defensive weapons, those scavenged from Stores and retrofitted by Torchwood mechanics, but even a couple of high octane pulse torpedoes didn't do much to turn the clunky vessels into lean, mean, fighting machines.

Jack didn't care. He watched his doppelgänger get blasted to bits, and the dull anger in his guts boiled over. He gunned the shuttle, and opened the torpedo hatches as he prepared to go into battle.

"Jack, no!" Ianto shouted. He threw out his arm, attempting to stop Jack physically when his warning failed. 

Without looking, Jack batted Ianto's arm away, and went back to concentrating on lining up his attack vector.

Thumb at the ready, Jack put himself between the Jardani fighter and the 456. He punched the triggering mechanism, launching one of his two available barrages of torpedoes, before lumbering out of range of the 456's guns, and arcing around in preparation to make another pass.

Ianto's hand came down hard upon his shoulder, which was odd, because Jack hadn't noticed him unstrapping himself or getting out of the co-pilot's chair. "Jack." Ianto's voice was a strident hiss against his ear. "Get a hold of yourself! We have a mission."

Jack stared out the viewscreen. His foolhardy act had been in vain. Either the Jack in the Jardani ship had miscalculated his attack vector, or the 456 had shielded their fueling ports, because nothing happened, other than the Jardani 222 getting blown away, seconds after it completed its run.

There was a red mist before his eyes, anger manifested in physical form. 

Ianto's hand was like a vice on his shoulder, his fingers digging into Jack's collarbone. 

_We have a mission._

The doomed pilots were doing their jobs, and they were doing them willingly in defence of the Earth. He also had a job. A hard job. He might not like it, but it was Jack's job to bear witness to their sacrifice. It was his job to hold fast until the technicians, who were working so feverishly, were ready. 

Mark's machine still spewed wires and cables. Jack could see it when he glanced into the rear view mirror. Mark was frowning as he made an adjustment on a piece of test gear, and then he leaned over the machine to make another connection. A technician examined a meter and shook her head, as her teammate communicated with the Hub on a secure channel.

They kept tweaking.

Testing. 

Fine tuning. 

Outside in space, another ship died as Jack beat an impatient tattoo against the steering console, and urged his technicians silently to hurry the hell up.

* * * 

"What the hell is he doing?" Andy said tersely as he watched Shuttle One lurch into the line of fire, launch a broadside of torpedoes at one of the 456 ships, and then lumber away again. "That wasn't part of the plan."

His gaze darted to the others on board. Owen, Dev, and Felicity all gave him equally blank looks. Apparently they had no idea what had gone through their captain's head either.

There were only a handful of defending ships left. Most of the rest were floating suspended in space. A few of those had deployed emergency beacons. It was possible that the pilots of those ships still lived.

Hopefully their air supplies would last longer than the final confrontation with the 456.

* * * 

In his head, Mark could see the machine in front of him, and it was perfect. Each component was exactly the right type. Every wire was precisely the right length. Every soldered connection had been made with a uniformly-sized silvery dot, that was neither too generous, nor too mean.

A work of art.

Mark sighed as he fitted a jumper wire into place and then hastily looped it around a grounding point. If he'd had time, say six or eight months, he could make reality match his vision. 

But he didn't have time.

What he had was an enemy invasion fleet breathing down their necks, and an unproven concept that was going into straight into production, without any of the prototyping steps in between.

He could feel the others' tension. He could hear their unspoken questions, especially those of the boss.

_Would it work?_

_Or would it be too little, too late?_

But Mark believed in his vision. The first trial run _had been_ effective, even if the psychic probe had gone up in smoke. And so far they'd been lucky. It was an ancillary connection circuit that had fried, not the guts of the generator. The alien technology had been robust enough to survive the hastily constructed experiment. He had to trust that it would do so again.

He made more connections. He was a surgeon; cutting, fitting, assessing, and finally joining wires and components. Mark looked down at his work, and judged it good. He glanced over at Nadine and nodded that it was time.

Phase One: Power up.

Phase Two: Send the trial signal and calibrate.

Phase Three: Up the gain on the Rift manipulator

Phase Four: Hope like hell he'd made the right choice, because once they started, there was no going back.

* * * 

"Hold us steady, boss," Mark called out to Jack. "The Rift manipulator is live in five, four, three, two … Now!" He flipped a switch. The technicians pressed against his shoulders to watch the machine do its work.

Jack spared a glance at his crew, and then he went back to staring out the viewscreen. He watched another one of his clones get picked off, and the ship he'd been piloting become a new debris field. 

"What's happening?" Martha asked.

"Powering up," Mark replied tersely. "Just a little longer…" 

"Nadine!" Mick, the male technician said. "There's too much oscillation. Lower the gain. Quick!" 

"Mark?" Ianto voice was strangled with suppressed tension.

"Nothing. It's fine. Stabilising." Mark sounded more as if he was talking to himself than giving a status report. "Martha, get that meter from the grey bag. We're going to need it in a minute. I hope." He muttered the last bit nearly under his breath.

The techs kept fiddling. Jack felt sweat break out under his hood. He wanted to wipe it away, but the seal prevented him. 

Abruptly, the 456 ships, both of them, ceased firing.

Jack's heart began to race faster. Had the cobbled together rats' nest of circuitry and wires actually worked? "What's happening?" His throat was so constricted he barely recognised the sound of his own voice.

"Imagine," Mark paused and started again. "Imagine if you will, the 456 standing in the centre of Millennium Stadium. The seats are packed. It's standing room only. And every person there is chanting. Their voices are calm, but they are very, very, clear. They are telling the 456, 'You are not welcome'."

"That's very British." Unbidden, Jack visualised an army of tight-lipped publicans and landladies, hands on hips, or arms crossed over chests, giving the 456 narrow-eyed expressions of disapproval as they were publicly barred. It was an amusing, if confusing image. "But I'm still not following you."

As Mark explained the fanciful scenario, Jack wasn't quite sure his ears were working correctly. In fact, he was positive that his foolhardy act of throwing the shuttle into the line of fire had got all of them killed, and he was hallucinating in the moments before his own, temporary, death. "Explain this this to me," he said. "In very small words."

"When we were brainstorming strategies," Mark explained, "Felicity suggested we plug the 456 into the VR machine, the one you lot got stuck in that one time. The suggestion was made partially in jest, but it got me thinking."

"And you know what happens when Mark starts thinking," Ianto said with an arch twist of his lips. He rotated the co-pilot's chair to face the back of the shuttle.

Mark shrugged. "We needed to run a calibration test. To make sure all the equipment was properly aligned." He looked over at Nadine. "Is the circuit holding?" 

She checked her meter and then nodded. 

"Status of the RM?" he asked Mick, who was coordinating with the Hub. 

Mick gave a thumb's up. "Signal is strong and steady." 

Mark looked up at Ianto. 

Ianto nodded.

Mark nodded back. He flipped another switch. There was an audible whine from the machinery. At least it was audible to Jack, no one else seemed to notice. No one spoke. Every tense expression was focused on the machinery that spilled over the deck of the shuttle. 

Two minutes crawled by. 

Nadine looked at her meter. Her eyes widened. She bolted for the fire extinguisher, and then held it at the ready.

The techs and Martha exchanged tense looks. 

Jack started to panic. Whatever they were doing, beyond chastising the 456 in virtual reality, wasn't working. They'd stalled the inevitable, but nothing more. And according to the latest update, the Judoon cavalry were still hours away. 

Mark mopped his forehead with the back of his hand. He extended the opposite hand to Martha, in a silent request for the device she held. 

Martha nodded back. Everyone, Jack noticed, was nodding, as if they didn't trust themselves to speak. She looked down at the gadget's display, and her eyes got very big, and then she passed it over. 

Her hands were trembling.

Mark glanced downward. he made an adjustment. And then he rose and plugged the device into the shuttle's telemetry computer. "I just need to verify the readings," he said. 

He looked away from the computer screen, and when he did, Mark looked shell shocked. 

The quiet was profound. Everywhere Jack looked, he saw faces that were drawn and tense. Painful seconds ticked by, as if his crew was waiting for the inevitable shoe to drop. That the ceasefire was an illusion, and the worst was yet to come. 

"We did it," Mark said in a profound sort of whisper. "We've beat the 456." 

Jack watched as around him the expressions changed, becoming guardedly hopeful. Finally, the guarded and tense expressions dissolved as they began to believe. The crew of Shuttle One burst out in cheers and applause that echoed joyously off the bulkheads, and Jack felt tears of relief run down his cheeks.

* * * 

"Do you see that?" Andy said. He stared out into space. Abruptly the two 456 ships had stopped firing.

Felicity leant forward in the copilot's chair. "Have they actually stopped?"

"Maybe they finally ran out of argon, or whatever it is they use to power their lasers," Owen speculated. "Wouldn't that be convenient. Unless, of course, that gadget that Mark and his little helpers were cobbling together, actually worked."

Dev slapped Owen across the arm. "If Mark designed it, of course it works. That's what he does."

Owen gave Dev a sideways look. "That was awfully fierce. You sweet on him or something?"

Many had withered under Dev's death glare, Andy had witnessed its impact on many a pub night. Owen merely appeared mildly curious as he met her gaze and waited for her reply. Surprisingly, it was Dev who backed down first. "He's my ex, if you must know. But what made him a crap boyfriend makes him very good at his job."

"Ah, isn't that sweet," Owen put his hand over his heart. "She's still carrying a torch." He leaned forward and asked in a conspiratorial whisper, "Recent breakup was it?"

To a trained observer, such as himself, the sparks flying between Dev and Owen were hard to miss. Dev and Mark hadn't ever had that kind of chemistry. They'd been mates, and then for a time lovers, but after a while it became apparent to them both that it wasn't working. They'd split up without a single acrimonious word, resumed their friendship, and they were still both intensely loyal to the other.

But there was a time and a place for everything, including romance.

"Oi! You back there," Andy said sharply. "Minds on the mission."

He returned his attention to the action outside the viewscreen, or more precisely, the lack of action, for an additional thirty seconds, and then he thumbed his comm switch. "Shuttle One, this is Shuttle Two. 456 status, over."

Jack's voice boomed over the comm almost immediately. _Shuttle Two, the 456 have been neutralised. I repeat. The 456 have been neutralised. Your mission is search and rescue. Bring our pilots home._

"Roger that, Shuttle One. Out."

It hardly seemed possible. They'd done it. They'd gone up into space. They'd fought an enemy that was bigger and more powerful than they were. And they'd actually won.

Dev and Owen stared at each other and seemed to call a truce. They threw themselves at one another, hugging enthusiastically. Andy shook his head to clear it. He felt supremely off balance. Felicity took his hand and gave it a tight squeeze, communicating her pleasure and relief. Her presence had a centring effect. Andy took a breath. He reversed their hands, so that he was the one doing the squeezing, and then once he'd got a grip on his composure, he reluctantly pulled away.

"All right, you lot," Andy said as he returned his attention to those under his command. "we've got our orders. Break out your helmets and safety lines. There are people out there who need our help."

* * * 

In space, the mop up and rescue operation was nearly complete. UNIT had sent up shuttles of their own to help with the recovery of the dead and the wounded. As for the disabled spacecraft, once a technical team determined how the 456's transmat system actually was operated, it would be put into service. Not to steal slaves, but to bring their broken ships home.

Surprisingly, UNIT had immediately concurred. Somewhere, on the lead 456 vessel, Jack and the task force commander were already planning their joint operation, plotting how their combined ragtag fleet might form the basis of a new, space-based, Earth defence force.

As for the current cooperative effort, Ianto and Martha's inspection tour of the largest of the three 456 ship was nearly complete, and Ianto was glad of it. Their environmental suits could keep the toxic atmosphere from poisoning their lungs, but they couldn't block out the sight of dozens of dead aliens, the tops of their heads blown off, and the resultant smears and splashes of slime and gore that coated bulkheads and workstations.

Even though they had wrought the horror, and it had been necessary for the survival of the planet, he felt sick in body and spirit. If he had ever believed there was glory in war, Ianto was now thoroughly disabused of the notion.

They approached a pair of gigantic doors. Martha looked down at the tablet she carried that contained a schematic of the ship. "Cargo bay, it says."

Ianto was tempted to give it a miss. He had passed exhausted some time ago, and was currently operating on a combination of stimulants and will power, but obligation to duty got the better of him. He pressed the obvious door control and stepped inside.

It was a huge, hangar-like space, filled floor to ceiling with shelves. On each shelf rested a coffin-sized white box, connected to a power source via a pair of cables.

Martha walked past him. Her head was raised and her eyes were wide as she took in the enormity of the cargo bay. "Oh. My. God," she said breathlessly. She ran forward and then stopped next to one of the containers. She stared down at the control panel, and then after a few moments of studious contemplation, pressed a series of buttons.

The panel on the top slid open. Martha took a step backwards. Ianto hurried forward to see what she had found.

The container was empty, thank God. But staring down into its cold, white depths, made the sick feeling in Ianto's stomach intensify as he realised its function. "It's a transport pod, isn't it."

Martha nodded. A sombre confirmation. She raised her eyes and scanned the room, once more taking in its vastness. "This could have been the fate of thousands. Tens of thousands."

Ianto shook his head. He put his hands on Martha's shoulders, as much to steady himself as to offer her comfort. "It doesn't bear contemplating." In his mind's eye he saw the body of a child resting in the pod, and he shuddered until he tore his gaze away. "Let's get out of here."

He guided Martha out of the cargo bay, and a tangible sensation of relief washed over him as he shut the bay door behind them.

* * *

All over the Hub people were celebrating the victory over the 456. The parties took many forms. There was a full on spread laid out in the commissary. Drink of all descriptions flowed copiously to wash down the sandwiches and pizzas that had been raided from the supermarket ready-made aisle. In other corners of the Hub, glasses were being quietly raised to fallen and injured comrades, and stories – both humorous and melancholy – were being shared.

One such gathering was going on in Jack's office. A bottle of fine cognac had been opened and decanted into crystal tumblers, and the guests made impromptu seats out of the filing cases and floor.

Jack was sitting in his chair. He had one arm linked loosely around Ianto's waist, and a small, contented smile on his face as he regarded the room at large. Inside, he was numb, still processing the bullet they'd dodged by besting the 456.

He watched as Owen whispered into Martha's ear and her eyes grew wide in shock and amazement. She hopped lightly off the credenza and regarded Jack with an expression of disbelief. "Tell me you didn't kidnap the PM and the Home Secretary."

Jack shot a sour look at Owen, and then glanced back at Martha. She was still regarding him steadily. He sucked air through his teeth, and felt his face fall into guilty lines. "I was hoping you wouldn't hear about that."

Waylaying the most important members of government had been a part of the invasion contingency plan that hadn't been general knowledge, although a surprisingly large number people had been necessarily in on the operation. Finally, Jack shrugged. "You know how government types can be. They look at bottom lines, weigh risks versus costs. Sometimes they forget those numbers on a page are people's lives at stake. I thought I knew, but I needed to make sure I knew, exactly where those gentlemen's priorities lay." He shrugged again. "As it turned out, I didn't have to worry. The PM and the HS were both devotees of Harriet Jones. The PM promised me he wouldn't do anything that wouldn't make her proud."

"Lucky you, or you could have been up on a treason charge," Martha remarked.

Jack decided not to let her in on how he had hedged his bets with truth serum and a potent cocktail of agents that made Retcon seem like aspirin. He gave her a naughty boy smile instead, and took a sip of cognac.

Owen raised his glass for a refill. Dev was closest, she also had the official guest chair. She tipped brandy into his glass and then after handing the bottle off to Andy, reached down and made a grab for Owen's empty hand. She pulled his arm so it was more or less comfortable for her to regard, and examined the monitor on his wrist.

"Mark, did you ever get anything useful off this gizmo?"

Mark gave Dev a mildly reproving look for diminishing his sophisticated monitoring device with such casual terminology, and then he shrugged off his irritation. "We did, actually."

Owen lowered his glass and looked sharply up at Mark. "Enough to get me back to my own dimension?"

Mark shook his head. "Not quite yet. But the data we gathered on tachyon condensation rates for particles that move between dimensions, has great potential for changing our understanding of how the Rift operates."

"So in layman's terms, there's sod all you can do to get me home." Owen knocked back the rest of his cognac. "I'm marooned."

Jack could feel the party atmosphere in the room nosedive. "Don't look at it like that, Owen."

The expression that Jack received in return made Owen's normal sour expression seem positively effervescent. "Then how should I look at it, Captain?"

Jack thought furiously. He was tired, and it was also entirely possible that he'd had too little food and too much brandy because he blurted, "You could be dead."

Surprisingly, Owen pressed his lips together and he nodded, as if he had no choice but to concede Jack had just made a valid point. His expression suggested that whatever tear he'd been ready to embark upon about the shortcomings of Torchwood's science staff had been cut short. "There is that. And I suppose that because of the vagaries of the Rift, even if you were to return me, it would have to be to the exact same place and time, and not a day earlier or a hundred metres to the left, into a nice, safe car park?"

Mark nodded that Owen's thinking was correct. "As far as we know, that's how it would go."

Owen glanced over at Dev. He seemed to be regarding her speculatively. He then shrugged, as if reaching a decision. "Then I reckon there's nothing for it then me sticking around." He unbuckled the monitor and lobbed it at Mark, who picked it easily from the air.

Jack had to double take as he caught Dev smiling a pleased smile, and then hiding her reaction by ducking her head so that her hair covered her face. He filed the moment away to share later with Ianto, and was about to change the subject, when the intruder alert sounded, indicating the Hub was about to go into Lockdown. "What the hell?"

Andy and Felicity were closest to the window looking down into the main body of the Hub. They both whirled and stared downward as Jack stabbed at the controls of his wrist strap to kill the alarm, and Ianto pulled the computer monitor into a more comfortable position to see if he could identify the source of the intruder.

"There's Rhinomen down there!" Andy blurted.

"Stand down, everybody," Jack said as he got to his feet. "The Judoon are here."

He threaded his way through the room to the doorway, stuck his head out, and chanted a greeting in rusty Judoonese. "Hello, boys!" he said. "The party's winding down, but we're glad you could make it all the same."

Of course in Judoonese there was no actual word for 'party' it was more like 'troop inspection without threat of death for minor infractions', but the sentiment was sincere.

The Judoon lumbered their way towards the catwalk. Most of those attending the gathering in Jack's office decided that was their cue to be somewhere else.

"Ianto. Andy. With me," Jack called out. "Everyone else, go home and get some sleep."

Jack patted shoulders and shook hands as he made his way out of the office with Ianto and Andy in tow. He made a round of introductions in English to allow the Judoon to calibrate their translator matrix. It had been a long time since he'd had a complex conversation in Judoonese, and frankly, in his current state, he had no doubt if he was required to continue to speak their language, he'd have himself up on charges for insulting a law enforcement officer before he'd got started explaining why there were three 456 ships hanging dead in space.

Upstairs, in his office, the phone rang. The sound of the secure line echoed through the now eerily silent Hub. Ianto shot a peeved expression upwards, and then he produced his headset from his jacket pocket and fitted it into place. With a deferential bow to the Judoon, he stepped away from Jack's side and took the call.

"One moment, please." Ianto muted the line. "Excuse me, Jack, it's the PM."

Jack wanted to sigh gustily, but he didn't. He consoled himself with the notion that once the PM and the Judoon were both handled then he and Ianto could slip away for some badly needed private time. "Right. Ianto, get these gentlemen whatever authorisations they need to get those 456 ships out of our space, and Andy, if you could arrange transport for any of our guests in the cells they'd be willing to take off our hands?"

Andy and Ianto nodded smartly. Gratefully, Jack nodded back, and then went to take his call.

* * *

Andy felt like he should have more to say to the two Judoon officers charged with taking custody of the Blowfish, since they were, in a manner of speaking, colleagues, but he found himself intimidated by the hulking, rhinoceros-like bipeds. They weren't very sociable, for starters, and they were right bastards when it came to paperwork, insisting that every I was dotted and every T crossed, and every box ticked on every form. Andy could feel sweat trickling down his back by the time he'd completed the Blowfishes' transfer authorisations. He'd made a small joke about filling in the request wrong being a hanging offence, and the Judoon hadn't laughed.

"Right, lads," Andy said to the still hungover Blowfish. "Here's your transport."

The quartet paled visibly and their gills began to fan rapidly when they clapped eyes on the Judoon. "Not cool, man," the smallest of the four whined to Andy.

Down the corridor, a weevil keened its discontent. With everything that had gone on, meals were late, and Andy realised it was probably hungry.

The senior Judoon said something in its own language to the junior officer. He barked a reply and marched towards the sound of the weevil.

The subordinate Judoon chanted at the weevil. The weevil caterwauled back. Andy watched as the Judoon made an adjustment on the translation device hanging on its belt. He held it upright, level with the weevil's forehead.

Incredibly, the weevil quieted and leant forward against the bars, as if it was willingly submitting to being scanned.

After several seconds, the Judoon officer lowered the translator. He took up a tablet-like device and chanted into it, then he showed the display to the weevil, who even more incredibly, nodded.

The Judoon officer nodded as well, and then he marched back to report to his superior.

"She is one of the missing," the senior Judoon said through the translator.

Andy frowned, deeply confused. "The missing? The missing from where?"

The two Judoon ignored his question. They tromped down the corridor and repeated the pantomime with the weevil.

Andy reached for his headset. "Boss, you need to come down to the cells. There's something you need to see. Right now."

* * * 

Andy had sounded downright disconcerted, which having dealt with the Judoon before, Jack could totally understand. But he was tired, and the last thing he wanted, having just reported to the Prime Minister, was to butt heads with another bureaucracy, which is why he had sent Andy to contend with the Judoon in the first place.

But as much as he was ready to pack it in, it wouldn't be safe to leave the Hub until the Judoon had been escorted safely off the premises, so Jack hauled himself out of his chair, and quick-time marched it down to the secure level.

A security officer met him at the door. She was young and tough looking, and Jack seemed to recall that she had been on the police boxing club before she had joined Torchwood, but he couldn't remember her name. "What's going on?" Jack asked her softly.

The SO caught his slight hesitation. "Lewis, sir, I'm not entirely sure. The Judoon seem to have taken an interest in the weevils."

Jack frowned. The Judoon taking too close an interest in anything, other than what they were specifically asked to get involved with, was rarely a good thing. He patted Lewis on the shoulder. The name Deb popped to the front of his weary brain as he started to move away. "Thanks, Deb." He flashed a quick smile at her, and then strode up to Andy and the Judoon.

"Boss." Andy seemed relieved to be superseded by a higher authority. "You're never going to believe this. The weevils have been talking to the Judoon."

Jack frowned, convinced he'd misheard. "Say that again."

"I know it's hard to wrap your head around," Andy said, instead. "But that Judoon bloke managed to strike up a conversation with those weevils in Cell Two. According to him, they've all been riftnapped."

Jack rubbed his palm over his face, trying to taking in the conversation, and failing. "The weevils can't talk. I know. I've tried."

Andy gestured to the box the Judoon wore at their waists. "No. But those gizmos translate weevil-brain patterns in a way that we can't. They just stuck them up to the weevils' heads and just like that: words."

"Just like that," Jack repeated. He thought of the hours he'd spent down in the cells communing and attempting to communicate with Janet and her friends. "So they can go home."

Andy nodded. "The Judoon say as long as they've got to haul off the 456 ships, they may as well put them to good use. They'll repatriate the weevils."

Jack found himself feeling a bit giddy. He grabbed Andy's shoulder to hold himself upright, and then took a breath. He grinned as he let go and stepped away. "Then I guess we better figure out a way to spread the good word." He went up the cells containing the about to be freed weevils, and pressed his hands against the divider. "You're going home." He grinned happily, genuinely pleased that something positive was coming out the confrontation with the 456.

* * * 

Quiet had descended over the Hub. The Judoon had emptied the cells, and then Jack had dismissed Andy and Deb with instructions to spread the word to anyone else who had any intention of sticking around to go home.

Ianto was still in the office, clearing Jack's desk of paperwork. He looked up and smiled a tired smile. "Martha said she was sorry she couldn't say goodbye in person, but she had to go to London for a post-situational, readiness review. Needless to say, she looks forward to a proper catch up soon."

Jack grimaced on Martha's behalf. "Some things never change. The military always did love a good post-crisis 'could've, should've, would've' session to remind their field officers how much better the brass behind the lines can wage a campaign."

"That sounds like the voice of experience," Ianto said as he put away a stack of folders in the desk drawer and then locked it. He pocketed the key. "Care to tell me about it?"

The last thing Jack wanted to do was talk to Ianto about old failures. Not when he had his own personal litany of 'could've, should've, would've' starting to whisper in his ear directly related to the files Ianto had just locked away. The price of protecting the planet from the Rift storm, and then from the 456, had been a costly one in both lives and materials. Once again, Cardiff could look forward to rebuilding.

And so could Torchwood.

Jack wasn't sure he was up to it.

Not again.

"Trust me, Ianto," Jack said. He couldn't help the weary note of fatigue that coloured his tone. "The only thing that comes out of those sessions, besides a ball busting, is the knowledge that no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, when a crisis hits, no one is really ready."

Ianto rose. He shot the cuffs of his shirt, and smoothed the lines of his suit jacket until it was perfect. He hadn't showered, as Jack closed for an embrace, he could smell the scent of a long, hard day clinging to Ianto's skin, but he had found time to shave. He pressed his cheek against Ianto's, and breathed in the scent of him.

The sick feeling of dread, the one Jack forced himself to ignore every time he sent Ianto into the danger zone, surged up out of his subconscious as he imagined all the ways he might have been harmed over the last few days. Weevils gone amok. Time-displaced soldiers, firing at what they perceived to be new enemy combatants. Previously harmless viruses, made lethal by the 456, as an incentive to cooperate with their extortion demands. Even his own foolhardy charge into battle in the lumbering shuttle craft. If the 456 had turned their guns on Shuttle One, Jack would have survived, but everyone else with him would have died as a result of his stupid and impetuousness act.

It was his own version of 'should've, could've, would've'. He should have had his technicians put more time into studying the causes behind the Rift storms. He could have, but hadn't, fostered more cooperation with UNIT, because he'd failed to admit to himself that the new leadership at UNIT HQ really was making changes for the better, forcing out generals who were more interested in empire building than protecting the planet. He would have had a better response to the 456 if he'd owned up to the fact that the people of Earth were their own, best, defenders, and it was up to organisations like Torchwood and UNIT to exploit every available resource, and encourage their governments to do the same, even if that meant admitting they had made contact, and had alien technology at their disposal.

"Hey! Jack?" Very gently, Ianto guided Jack's face off his shoulder so that they were standing face to face. He used the pad of his thumb to wipe away tears Jack hadn't even realised had started to fall. "What's the matter?"

Jack tried to pull away. He was suddenly profoundly exhausted. "Nothing. I'm fine," he lied.

Ianto gave him a patient smile in return. "If by fine you mean fed up, insanely tired, and several other words I can't quite work out, because I'm absolutely shattered myself, that might fit into the sort of acronym a therapist would use, then I agree, you're fine." His face became serious. "Come home with me, Jack."

"Home?" Jack parroted numbly. As small and confined as it was, his bed was so much closer, and he longed to close his eyes and just shut down as he was overwhelmed by fatigue toxins.

"Come on, Captain."

Jack didn't protest as Ianto helped him into his coat. He let himself be guided out of the office, down the corridor, and out of his private exit, where Ianto's car was parked next to his own.

He looked up into a still night sky and saw nothing but the stars. Around him, everything was calm and peaceful. The world seemed to hold its breath against whatever the new day might bring with it.

Maybe they were ready. 

Maybe they weren't.

Maybe being ready was overrated. 

Or maybe, Jack thought as he reconsidered the last few days, being ready wasn't about having a Master Plan or a Killer Strategy, but it _was_ about being willing to see possibilities and potential everywhere, like the members of his team had done when they'd used flotsam and jetsam from the Rift to put together an effective weapon against the 456. 

Ianto slipped his arms around Jack's waist and whispered into his ear, "You've not gone to sleep on your feet, have you?" 

Jack leaned into the embrace, enjoying the feelings of security and protection that it evoked. "Nah, just thinking."

"What about?" Ianto asked.

Jack felt a massive swell of pride as he replied, "When it really mattered, Torchwood was ready."

end


End file.
